
Class 
Book. 



133 



()0p>7ightN^. 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 

















i| 1 




** 1 


■ 1 






^1 ^H 






1 







COTUIT 



CAPE COD 



BY 



HENRY D. THOREAU 



WITH INTKODUCTION AND ILLUSTRATIONS 

FROM PHOTOGRAPHS 

BY CHARLES S. OLCOTT 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

1914 



f s 



'^$5 



COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



AUG -8 1914 



CI,A376929 



CONTENTS 






PAGE 


Introductory Note . . . , , 


• • vii 


I. The Shipwreck 


. 1 


II. Stage-Coach Views 


20 


III. The Plains of Nauset 


. 34 


IV. The Beach 


65 


V. The Wellpleet Oysterman 


. 92 


VI. The Beach Again .... 


. 120 


VII. Across the Cape .... 


.153 


VIII. The Highland Light 


. . 179 


IX. The Sea and the Desert 


. 211 


X. Provincetown . ♦ • , « 


. 255 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



PAGE 



CoTuiT Frontispiece V^' 

A Street in Yarmouth 24 \/^ 

Evening, Chatham Harbor 30 '^ 

The Oldest House on Cape Cod, built in 1690 32 ^'^ 

Old Mill, Eastham 381/ 

The Beach, from Highland Light . . . 66 ^ 
A Sand Dune, showing the Stone that marks the 

Boundary between Wellflbbt and Truro . 94 ^ 
Higgins and Gull Ponds, near Wellfleet . 104 '^ 

Fish Wagon, Yarmouth 140 '^ 

Pond Village (North Truro) .... 168 "^ 

Mackerel and Butterfish 218 ^ 

Beach Peas 248 

Scallop Shacks, Mill Pond, Chatham . . . 266 ^ . 

Beach Plums 278 ^ 

A Cranberry Bog, near Harwich .... 294 
Bass River from West Dennis .... 318 K 



INTRODUCTION TO THE 
VISITOR'S EDITION 

BY CHARLES S. OLCOTT 

Although the activities of sixty-five years 
have done much to change the aspect of Cape 
Cod since Thoreau made his first visit in 1849, 
yet the visitor of to-day who follows in his foot- 
steps may gather many of the same impressions 
and experience many of the same conditions. 
Thoreau traveled by rail to Sandwich, thence by 
stage-coach to Orleans, and from there walked to 
Provincetown. The visitor to-day may travel the 
entire distance by train, or he may, preferably, 
glide over the well-oiled roads at a rapid pace in 
an automobile ; but if he wishes to see things 
with the eyes of Thoreau he must do neither 
of these, but get an old-fashioned " horse and 
buggy " and travel over some of the sandy roads 
among the scraggly pitch pines and shrub oaks, 
or walk along the seashore through the sand, as 
Thoreau did, stopping at frequent intervals to 
empty his shoes. 

A journey of this kind is really necessary to en- 
able one to get the full flavor of Thoreau's " Cape 
Cod." The sands of the seashore are constantly 



viii INTRODUCTION 

shifting and forming yearly a different coast-line, 
and yet their aspect is essentially the same. One 
can look up, as Thoreau did, to the towering 
beach bluffs, or, climbing these heights, he can 
surVey a country of sand-dunes and desert. If 
the present-day visitor should proceed as far 
north as the division line between Wellfleet and 
Truro, he might find, if he had a well-informed 
native to guide him, the stone post, half buried 
in sand, that marked the boundary line when 
Thoreau walked along the shore and where he 
diverted his route toward the interior. He could 
then walk over a sandy road by the margin of 
some pretty lakes, or ponds, and eventually come 
to one of those " sober-looking houses within 
half a mile " which Thoreau saw. The first of 
these is the identical house where Thoreau 
knocked at the door and found the inhabitants 
gone. The second is the veritable home of the 
"Wellfleet oysterman," where our traveler of 
two generations ago stopped over night with the 
old man of eighty-eight years, who remembered 
hearing the cannon fire at the time of the battle 
of Bunker Hill. His name was John Young New- 
comb, and he is well remembered as " Uncle 
Jack." The two houses are well preserved, though 
unoccupied. They are the sole survivors of the 
settlement which originally occupied this immedi- 
ate vicinity. Many apple trees and lilac bushes 



INTRODUCTION ix 

scattered between this neighborhood and the 
present village of Wellfleet, mark the spots 
where farm-houses formerly stood, but the old 
part of the village of Wellfleet is now entirely 
depopulated. 

From the home of Uncle Jack, or better, from 
the hill near by, may be seen a number of ponds, 
the largest and most beautiful of which is Gull 
Pond, about a mile in circumference. The others 
are Newcomb's, Swett's, Slough, Horse-Leech, 
Kound, and Herring Ponds. Thoreau mentions 
that the old man made him repeat the names to 
see that he got them right. The scenery from this 
point is as beautiful as in any part of Cape Cod. 
On another hill, not far away, is the place where 
the old man found a comfortable seat and sat 
down to see the Franklin wrecked, a boy having 
notified him that the vessel was too near the 
shore. 

The vegetation which Thoreau describes may 
be seen in abundance in this section. The visitor 
may walk over acres of ground covered with the 
bearberries, which are still used for medicinal 
purposes. He will see patches here and there 
of the moss-like " poverty-grass," with bright 
yellow blossoms, flourishing in the sand where 
nothing else will grow. He will find bayberries 
in abundance and plenty of huckleberries. He 
will see the beach peas growing on the sandy 



X INTRODUCTION 

banks along the shore, and here and there, if he 
happens to visit the Cape in the spring of the 
year, will see the beautiful white blossoms of the 
beach 23lums, in clusters of shrubbery not over 
two or three feet high. At Highland Light he 
may stand upon the same high bluff overlooking 
the ocean and watch the breakers coming in as 
Thoreau did, but he will see a different light- 
house, a larger and finer one equipped with 
modern apparatus. By its side he will see what 
Thoreau never dreamed of, a high mast, held in 
position by innumerable wire ropes and used for 
the receipt and transmission of wireless mes- 
sages. At Provincetown he will see the same 
kind of sand-dunes and drifts that Thoreau de- 
scribes, will walk through the same long narrow 
street, only eighteen feet wide, and will see the 
same harbor and some of the same old wharves 
along the water-front. 

Thoreau has much to say about the industries 
of the Cape, particularly the clam and oyster 
business and the fisheries. The visitor of to-day 
will hear much talk of these things, although 
there have been changes. The modern clam-digger 
and oysterman bring in their shellfish in motor- 
boats, and the boats of the old-time mackerel fleet 
no longer depend upon their sails, but come to 
shore under the power of gasoline engines. The 
old windmills that Thoreau mentioned as char- 



INTRODUCTION , xi 

acteristic of the Cape may still be seen, many of 
them retaining- the old mill-stones. Some of these 
are kept in excellent repair by their owners, 
while others have been allowed to fall into de- 
cay and are half covered with the sand. Next to 
the windmills as landmarks, according to Tho- 
reau, were the churches, and these may still be 
seen standing out conspicuously on the high 
ground, acting as useful guides to the sailors at 
sea, and offering their assistance in the same 
capacity to any landsmen who may attend their 
services. 

It was never Thoreau's practice to frequent the 
villages in his travels. He preferred the seashore 
and the woods and the wild open places. The 
visitor who goes to Cape Cod to-day in the spirit 
of Thoreau may still avoid, as he did, most of 
the signs of habitation and enjoy the sweep of 
the sand and of the ocean, fill his lungs with the 
fresh air and enjoy the atmosphere of the Cape, 
observing its birds and flowers and trees, its 
sands and its shellfish, in very much the same 
way that Thoreau did ; and for those who enjoy 
the things of nature this is really the best way 
to see Cape Cod. 



CAPE COD 



THE SHIPWRECK 



Wishing to get a better view than I had yet 
had of the ocean, which, we are told, covers 
more than two thirds of the globe, but of which 
a man who lives a few miles inland may never 
see any trace, more than of another world, I 
made a visit to Cape Cod in October, 1849, an- 
other the succeeding June, and another to Truro 
in July, 1855; the first and last time with a 
single companion, the second time alone. I 
have spent, in all, about three weeks on the 
Cape; walked from Eastham to Provincetown 
twice on the Atlantic side, and once on the Bay 
side also, excepting four or five miles, and 
crossed the Cape half a dozen times on my way; 
but having come so fresh to the sea, I have got 
but little salted. My readers must expect only 
so much saltness as the land breeze acquires 
from blowing over an arm of the sea, or is tasted 
on the windows and the bark of trees twenty 
miles inland, after September gales. I have 



2 CAPE COD 

been accustomed to make excursions to the ponds 
within ten miles of Concord, but latterly I have 
extended my excursions to the seashore. 

I did not see why I might not make a book on 
Cape Cod, as well as my neighbor on " Human 
Culture." It is but another name for the same 
thing, and hardly a sandier phase of it. As for 
my title, I suppose that the word Cape is from 
the French cap ; which is from the Latin caput, 
a head ; which is, perhaps, from the verb capere, 
to take, — that being the part by which we take 
hold of a thing : — Take Time by the forelock. 
It is also the safest part to take a serpent by. 
And as for Cod, that was derived directly from 
that "great store of cod-fish" which Captain 
Bartholomew Gosnold caught there in 1602; 
which fish ai3pears to have been so called from 
the Saxon word codde, "a case in which seeds 
are lodged," either from the form of the fish, or 
the quantity of spawn it contains; whence also, 
perhaps, codling i^'''' pommn coctile^''f^ and 
coddle, — to cook green like peas. (V. Die.) 

Cape Cod is the bared and bended arm of 
Massachusetts: the shoulder is at Buzzard's 
Bay; the elbow, or crazy -bone, at Cape Malle- 
barre ; the wrist at Truro ; and the sandy fist at 
Provincetown, — behind which the State stands 
on her guard, with her back to the Green Moun- 
tains, and her feet planted on the floor of the 



THE SHIPWRECK 3 

ocean, like an athlete protecting' her Bay, — 
boxing with northeast storms, and, ever and 
anon, heaving up her Atlantic adversary from 
the lap of earth, — ready to thrust forward her 
other fist, which keeps guard the while upon her 
breast at Cape Ann. 

On studying the map, I saw that there must 
be an uninterrupted beach on the east or outside 
of the forearm of the Cape, more than thirty 
miles from the general line of the coast,' which 
would afford a good sea view, but that, on ac- 
count of an opening in the beach, forming the 
entrance to Nauset Harbor, in Orleans, I must 
strike it in Eastham, if I approached it by land, 
and probably I could walk thence straight to 
Race Point, about twenty-eight miles, and not 
meet with any obstruction. 

We left Concord, Massachusetts, on Tuesday, 
October 9, 1849. On reaching Boston, we found 
that the Provincetown steamer, which should 
have got in the day before, had not yet arrived, 
on account of a violent storm; and, as we no- 
ticed in the streets a handbill headed, '' Death ! 
one hundred and forty-five lives lost at Cohas- 
set,'* we decided to go by way of Cohasset. 
We found many Irish in the cars, going to iden- 
tify bodies and to sympathize with the survivors, 
and also to attend the funeral which was to take 
place in the afternoon ; — and when we arrived 



4 CAP^ COD 

at Cohasset, it appeared that nearly all the pas- 
sengers were bound for the beach, which was 
about a mile distant, and many other persons 
were flocking in from the neighboring country. 
There wei^e several hundreds of them streaming 
off over Cohasset common in that direction, 
some on foot and some in wagons, — and among 
them were some sportsmen in their hunting- 
jackets, with their guns, and game-bags, and 
dogs. As we passed tlie graveyard we saw a 
large hole, like a cellar, freshly dug there, and, 
just before reaching the shore, by a pleasantly 
winding and rocky road, we met several hay -rig- 
gings and farm-wagons coming away toward the 
meeting - house, each loaded with three large, 
rough deal boxes. We did not need to ask what 
was in them. The owners of the wagons were 
made the undertakers. Many horses in carriages 
were fastened to the fences near the shore, and, 
for a mile or more, up and down, the beach was 
covered with people looking out for bodies, and 
examinino^ the frao^ments of the wreck. There 
was a small island called Brook Island, with a 
hut on it, lying just off the shore. This is said 
to be the rockiest shore in Massachusetts, from 
Nantasket to Scituate, — hard sienitic rocks, 
which the waves have laid bare, but have not 
been able to crumble. It has been the scene of 
many a shipwreck. 



THE SHIPWRECK 6 

The brig St. John, from Galway, Ireland, 
laden with emigrants, was wrecked on Sunday 
morning ; it was now Tuesday morning, and the 
sea was still breaking violently on the rocks. 
There were eighteen or twenty of the same large 
boxes that I have mentioned, lying on a green 
hillside, a few rods from the water, and sur- 
rounded by a crowd. The bodies which had 
been recovered, twenty -seven or eight in all, had 
been collected there. Some were rapidly nail- 
ing down the lids, others were carting the boxes 
away, and others were lifting the lids, which 
were yet loose, and peeping under the cloths, 
for each body, with such rags as still adhered to 
it, was covered loosely with a white sheet. 1 
witnessed no signs of grief, but there was a sober 
dispatch of business which was affecting. One 
man was seeking to identify a particular body, 
and one undertaker or c^irpenter was calling to 
another to know in what box a certain child was 
put. I saw many marble feet and matted heads 
as the cloths were raised, and one livid, swollen, 
and mangled body of a drowned girl, — who pro- 
bably had intended to go out to service in some 
American family, — to which some rags still ad- 
hered, with a string, half concealed by the flesh, 
about its swollen neck; the coiled-up wreck of 
a. human hulk, gashed by the rocks or fishes, so 
that the bone and muscle were exposed, but quite 



6 CAPE COD 

bloodless, — merely red and white, — with wide- 
open and staling eyes, yet lustreless, dead- 
lights ; or like the cabin windows of a stranded 
vessel, filled with sand. Sometimes there were 
two or more children, or a parent and child, in 
the same box, and on the lid would perhaps be 
written with red chalk, "Bridget such-a-one, 
and sister's child." The surrounding sward was 
covered with bits of sails and clothing. I have 
since heard, from one who lives by this beach, 
that a woman who had come over before, but 
had left her infant behind for her sister to 
bring, came and looked into these boxes, and 
saw in one — probably the same whose super- 
scription I have quoted — her child in her sis- 
ter's arms, as if the sister had meant to be 
found thus; and within three days after, the 
mother died from the effect of that sight. 

We turned from this and walked along the 
rocky shore. * In the first cove were strewn 
what seemed the fragments of a vessel, in small 
pieces mixed with sand and seaweed, and great 
quantities of feathers; but it looked so old and 
rusty, that I at first took it to be some old 
wreck which had lain there many years. I 
even thought of Captain Kidd, and that the 
feathers were those which sea-fowl had cast 
there; and perhaps there might be some tradi- 
tion about it in the neighborhood. I asked a 



THE SHIPWRECK 7 

sailor if that was the St. John. He said it 
was. I asked him where she struck. He 
pointed to a rock in front of us, a mile from the 
shore, called the Grampus Rock, and added, — 

"You can see a part of her now sticking up; 
it looks like a small boat." 

I saw it. It was thought to be held by the 
chain-cables and the anchors. I asked if the 
bodies which I saw were all that were drowned. 

"Not a quarter of them," said he. 

"Where are the rest?" 

"Most of them right underneath that piece 
you see." 

It appeared to us that there was enough rub- 
bish to make the wreck of a large vessel in this 
cove alone, and that it would take many days to 
cart it off. It was several feet deep, and here 
and there was a bonnet or a jacket on it. In 
the very midst of the crowd about this wreck, 
there were men with carts busily collecting the 
seaweed which the storm had cast up, and con- 
veying it beyond the reach of the tide, though 
they were often obliged to separate fragments 
of clothing from it, and they might at any 
moment have found a human body under it. 
Drown who might, they did not forget that this 
weed was a valuable manure. This shipwreck 
had not produced a visible vibration in the 
fabric of society. 



8 CAPE COD 

About a mile south we could see, rising above 
the rocks, the masts of the British brig which 
the St. John had endeavored to follow, which 
had slipped her cables, and, by good luck, run 
into the mouth of Cohasset Harbor. A little 
further along the shore we saw a man's clothes 
on a rock; further, a woman's scarf, a gown, a 
straw bonnet, the brig's caboose, and one of her 
masts high and dry, broken into several pieces. 
In another rocky cove, several rods from the 
water, and behind rocks twenty feet high, lay a 
part of one side of the vessel, still hanging to- 
gether. It was, perhaps, forty feet long, by 
fourteen wide. I was even more surprised at 
the power of the waves, exhibited on this shat- 
tered fragment, than I had been at the sight of 
the smaller fragments before. The largest tim- 
bers and iron braces were broken superfluously, 
and I saw that no material could withstand the 
power of the waves; that iron must go to pieces 
in such a case, and an iron vessel would be 
cracked up like an egg-shell on the rocks. Some 
of these timbers, however, were so rotten that I 
could almost thrust my umbrella through them. 
They told us that some were saved on this piece, 
and also showed where the sea had heaved it 
into this cove which was now dry. When I saw 
where it had come in, and in what condition, I 
wondered that any had been saved on it. A lit- 



THE SHIPWRECK 9 

tie further on a crowd of men was collected 
around the mate of the St. John, who was tell- 
ing his story. He was a slim-looking youth, 
who spoke of the captain as the master, and 
seemed a little excited. He was saying that 
when they jumped into the boat, she filled, and, 
the vessel lurching, the weight of the water in 
the boat caused the painter to break, and so 
they were separated. Whereat one man came 
away, saying, — 

"Well, I don't see but he tells a straight 
story enough. You see, the weight of the water 
in the boat broke the painter. A boat full of 
water is very heavy," — and so on, in a loud 
and impertinently earnest tone, as if he had a 
bet depending on it, but had no humane inter- 
est in the matter. 

Another, a large man, stood near by upon a 
rock, gazing into the sea, and chewing large 
quids of tobacco, as if that habit were forever 
confirmed with him. 

"Come," says another to his companion, 
"let's be off. We've seen the whole of it. 
It 's no use to stay to the funeral." 

Further, we saw one standing upon a rock, 
who, we were told, was one that was saved. 
He was a sober-looking man, dressed in a 
jacket and gray pantaloons, with his hands in 
the pockets, I asked him a few questions, 



10 CAPE COD 

which he answered ; but he seemed unwilling to 
talk about it, and soon walked away. By his 
side stood one of the life-boat men, in an oil- 
cloth jacket, who told us how they went to 
the relief of the British brig, thinking that the 
boat of the St. John, which they passed on the 
way, held all her crew, — for the waves pre- 
vented their seeing those who were on the vessel, 
though they might have saved some had they 
known there were any there. A little further 
was the flag of the St. John spread on a rock to 
dry, and held down by stones at the corners. 
This frail, but essential and significant portion 
of the vessel, which had so long been the sport 
of the winds, was sure to reach the shore. 
There were one or two houses visible from these 
rocks, in which were some of the survivors re- 
coverinof from the shock which their bodies and 
minds had sustained. One was not expected to 
live. 

We kept on down the shore as far as a pro- 
montory called Whitehead, that we might see 
more of the Cohasset Rocks. In a little cove, 
within half a mile, there were an old man and 
his son collecting, with their team, the seaweed 
which that fatal storm had cast up, as serenely 
employed as if there had never been a wreck in 
the world, though they were within sight of the 
Grampus Kock, on which the St. John had 



THE SHIPWRECK 11 

struck. The old man had heard that there was 
a wreck and knew most of the particulars, but 
he said that he had not been up there since it 
happened. It was the wrecked weed that con- 
cerned him most, rock- weed, kelp, and sea- 
weed, as he named them, which he carted to his 
barnyard; and those bodies were to him but 
other weeds which the tide cast up, but which 
were of no use to him. We afterwards came to 
the life-boat in its harbor, waiting for another 
emergency, — and in the afternoon we saw the 
funeral procession at a distance, at the head of 
which walked the captain with the other sur- 
vivors. 

On the whole, it was not so impressive a 
scene as I might have expected. If I had found 
one body cast upon the beach in some lonely 
place, it would have affected me more. I sym- 
pathized rather with the winds and waves, as if 
to toss and mangle these poor human bodies 
was the order of the day. If this was the law 
of Nature, why waste any time in awe or pity? 
If the last day were come, we should not think 
so much about the separation of friends or the 
6lighted prospects of individuals. I saw that 
corpses might be multiplied, as on the field of 
battle, till they no longer affected us in any de- 
gree, as exceptions to the common lot of human- 
ity. Take all the graveyards together, they are 



12 CAPE COD 

always the majority. It is the individual and 
private that demands our sympathy. A man 
can attend but one funeral in the course of his 
life, can behold but one corpse. Yet I saw 
that the inhabitants of the shore would be not a 
little affected by this event. They would watch 
there many days and nights for the sea to give 
up its dead, and their imaginations and sympa- 
thies would supply the place of mourners far 
away, who as yet knew not of the wreck. Many 
days after this, something white was seen float- 
ing on the water by one who was sauntering on 
the beach. It was approached in a boat, and 
found to be the body of a woman, which had 
risen in an upright position, whose white cap 
was blown back with the wind. I saw that the 
beauty of the shore itself was wrecked for many 
a lonely walker there, until he could perceive, 
at last, how its beauty was enhanced by wrecks 
like this, and it acquired thus a rarer and 
sublimer beauty still. 

Why care for these dead bodies? They 
really have no friends but the worms or fishes. 
Their owners were coming to the New World, 
as Columbus and the Pilgrims did, — they were 
within a mile of its shores; but, before they 
could reach it, they emigrated to a newer world 
than ever Columbus dreamed of, yet one of 
whose existence we believe that there is far more 



THE SHIPWRECK 13 

universal and convincing evidence — though it 
has not yet been discovered by science — than 
Cohnubus had of this : not merely mariners' 
tales and some paltry drift-wood and seaweed, 
but a continual drift and instinct to all our 
shores. I saw their empty hulks that came to 
land ; but they themselves, meanwhile, were cast 
upon some shore yet further west, toward which 
we are all tending, and which we shall reach at 
last, it may be through storm and darkness, as 
they did. No doubt, we have reason to thank 
God that they have not been " shipwrecked into 
life again." The mariner who makes the safest 
port in Heaven, perchance, seems to his friends 
on earth to be shipwrecked, for they deem Bos- 
ton Harbor the better place ; though perhaps in- 
visible to them, a skillful pilot comes to meet 
him, and the fairest and balmiest gales blow off 
that coast, his good ship makes the land in hal- 
cyon days, and he kisses the shore in rapture 
there, while his old hulk tosses in the surf here. 
It is hard to part with one's body, but, no doubt, 
it is easy enough to do without it when once it is 
gone. All their plans and hopes burst like a 
bubble I Infants by the score dashed on the 
rocks by the enraged Atlantic Ocean ! No, 
no ! If the St. John did not make her port here, 
she has been telegraphed there. The strongest 
wind cannot stagger a Spirit ; it is a Spirit's 



14 CAPE COD 

breath. A just man's purpose cannot be split 
on any Grampus or material rock, but itself 
will split rocks till it succeeds. 

The verses addressed to Columbus, dying, 
may, with slight alterations, be applied to the 
passengers of the St. John, — 

" Soon with them will all be over, 
Soon the voyage will be begun 
That shall bear them to discover, 
Far away, a land unknown. 

" Land that each, alone, must visit, 
But no tidings bring to men ; 
For no sailor, once departed. 
Ever hath retxirned again. 

" No carved wood, no broken branches 
Ever drift from that far wild ; 
He who on that ocean launches 
Meets no corse of angel chUd. 

" Undismayed, my noble sailors, 
Spread, then spread your canvas out ; 
Spirits ! on a sea of ether 
Soon shall ye serenely float ! 

*' Where the deep no plummet soundeth, 
Fear no hidden breakers there. 
And the fanning wing of angels 
Shall youi' bark right onward bear. 

*' Quit, now, full of heart and comfort, 
These rude shores, they are of earth ; 
Where the rosy clouds are parting. 
There the blessed isles loom forth." 



THE SHIPWRECK 15 

One summer day, since this, I came this way, 
on foot, along the shore from Boston. It was 
so warm, that some horses had climbed to the 
very top of the ramparts of the old fort at Hull, 
where there was hardly room to turn round, for 
the sake of the breeze. The Datura stramo- 
nium, or thorn-apple, was in full bloom along 
the beach; and, at sight of this cosmopolite, — 
this Captain Cook among plants, — carried in 
ballast all over the world, I felt as if I were on 
the highway of nations. Say, rather, this 
Viking, king of the Bays, for it is not an inno- 
cent plant; it suggests not merely commerce, 
but its attendant vices, as if its fibres were the 
stuff of which pirates spin their yarns. I heard 
the voices of men shouting aboard a vessel, half 
a mile from the shore, which sounded as if they 
were in a barn in the country, they being be- 
tween the sails. It was a purely rural sound. 
As I looked over the water, I saw the isles 
rapidly wasting away, the sea nibbling vora- 
ciously at the continent, the springing arch of a 
hill suddenly interrupted, as at Point Allerton, 
— what botanists might call premorse, — show- 
ing, by its curve against the sky, how much 
space it must have occupied, where now was 
water only. On the other hand, these wrecks 
of isles were being fancifully arranged into new 
shores, as at Hog Island, inside of Hull, where 



16 CAPE COD 

everything seemed to be gently lapsing into 
futurity. Tliis isle had got the very form of a 
ripple, — and I thought that the inhabitants 
should bear a ripple for device on their shields, 
a wave passing over them, with the datura, 
which is said to produce mental alienation of 
long duration without affecting the bodily 
health,^ springing from its edge. The most in- 
teresting thing which I heard of, in this town- 
ship of Hull, was an unfailing spring, whose lo- 
cality was pointed out to me, on the side of a 
distant hill, as I was panting along the shore, 
though I did not visit it. Perhaps, if I should 
go tlirough Rome, it would be some spring on 
the Capitoline Hill I should remember the long- 

^ The Jamestown weed (or thorn-apple). "This, being an 
early plant, was gathered very young for a boiled salad, by 
some of the soldiers sent thither [i. e., to Virginia] to quell the 
rebellion of Bacon ; and some of them ate plentifully of it, the 
effect of which was a very pleasant comedy, for they turned 
natural fools upon* it for several days: one would blow up a 
feather in the air ; another would dart straws at it with much 
fury ; and another, stark naked, was sitting up in a corner like 
a monkey, grinning and making mows at them^ ; a fourth would 
fondly kiss and paw his companions, and sneer in their faces, 
with a countenance more antic than any in- a Dutch droll. In 
this frantic condition they were confined, lest they should, in 
their folly, destroy themselves, — though it was observed that 
all their actions were full of innocence and good nature. In- 
deed, they were not very cleanly. A thousand such simple 
tricks they played, and after eleven days returned to them- 
selves again, not remembering anything that had passed." — 
Beverly's History of Virginia, p. 120. 



THE SHIPWRECK 17 

est. It is true, I was somewhat interested in 
the well at the old French fort, which was said 
to be ninety feet deep, with a cannon at the 
bottom of it. On Nantasket beach I counted a 
dozen chaises from the public-house. From 
time to time the riders turned their horses 
toward the sea, standing in the water for the 
coolness, — and I saw the value of beaches to 
cities for the sea breeze and the bath. 

At Jerusalem village the inhabitants were col- 
lecting in haste, before a thunder-shower now 
approaching, the Irish moss which they had 
spread to dry. The shower passed on one side, 
and gave me a few drops only, which did not 
cool the air. I merely felt a puff upon my 
cheek, though, within sight, a vessel was cap- 
sized in the bay, and several others dragged 
their anchors, and were near going .ashore. 
The sea-bathing at Cohasset Rocks was perfect. 
The water was purer and more transparent than 
any I had ever seen. There was not a particle 
of mud or slime about it. The bottom being 
sandy, I could see the sea-perch swimming 
about. The smooth and fantastically worn 
rocks, and the perfectly clean and tress-like 
rock-weeds falling over you, and attached so 
firmly to the rocks that you could pull yourself 
up by them, greatly enhanced the luxury of the 
bath. The stripe of barnacles just above the 



18 CAPE COD 

weeds reminded me of some vegetable growth, 
— the buds, and petals, and seed-vessels of 
flowers. They lay along the seams of the rock 
like buttons on a waistcoat. It was one of the 
hottest days in the year, yet I found the water 
so icy cold that I could swim but a stroke or 
two, and thought that, in case of shipwreck, 
there would be more danger of being chilled to 
death than simply drowned. One immersion 
was enough to make you forget the dog-days 
utterly. Though you were sweltering before, 
it will take you half an hour now to remember 
that it was ever warm. There were the tawny 
rocks, like lions couchant, defying the ocean, 
whose waves incessantly dashed against and 
scoured them with vast quantities of gravel. 
The water held in their little hollows, on the re- 
ceding of the tide, was so crystalline that I could 
not believe it salt, but wished to drink it; and 
higher up were basins of fresh water left by the 
rain, — all which, being also of different depths 
and temperature, were convenient for different 
kinds of baths. Also, the larger hollows in the 
smoothed rocks formed the most convenient of 
seats and dressing-rooms. In these respects it 
was the most perfect seashore that I had seen. 

I saw in Cohasset, separated from the sea 
only by a narrow beach, a handsome but shallow 
lake of some four hundred acres, which, I was 



THE SHIPWRECK 19 

told, the sea had tossed over the beach in a great 
storm in the spring, and, after the alewives had 
passed into it, it had stopped up its outlet, and 
now the alewives were dving by thousands, and 
the inhabitants were apprehending a pestilence 
as the water evaporated. It had five rocky- 
islets in it. 

This rocky shore is called Pleasant Cove, on 
some maps ; on the map of Cohasset, that name 
appears to be confined to the particular cove 
where I saw the wreck of the St. John. The 
ocean did not look, now, as if any were ever 
shipwrecked in it ; it was not grand and sublime, 
but beautiful as a lake. Not a vestige of a 
wreck was visible, nor could I believe that the 
bones of many a shipwrecked man were buried 
in that pure sand. But to go on with our first 
excursion. 



n 

STAGE-COACH VIEWS 

After spending the night in Bridgewater, 
and picking up a few arrow-heads there in the 
morning, we took the cars for Sandwich, where 
we arrived before noon. This was the terminus 
of the "Cape Cod Railroad," though it is but 
the beginning of the Cape. As it rained hard, 
with driving mists, and there was no sign of its 
holding up, we here took that almost obsolete 
conveyance, the stage, for "as far as it went 
that day," as we told the driver. We had for- 
gotten how far a stage could go in a day, but 
we were told that the Cape roads were very 
"heavy," though they added that being of sand, 
the rain would improve them. This coach was 
an exceedingly narrow one, but as there was a 
slight spherical excess over two on a seat, the 
driver waited till nine passengers had got in, 
without taking the measure of any of them, and 
then shut the door after two or three ineffectual 
slams, as if the fault were all in the hinges or 
the latch, — while we timed our inspirations and 
expirations so as to assist him. 



STAGE-COACH VIEWS 21 

We were now fairly on the Cape, which ex- 
tends from Sandwich eastward thirty -five miles, 
and thence north and northwest thirty more, in 
all sixty-five, and has an average breadth of 
about five miles. In the interior it rises to the 
height of two hundred, and sometimes perhaps 
three hundred feet above the level of the sea. 
According to Hitchcock, the geologist of the 
State, it is composed almost entirely of sand, 
even to the depth of three hundred feet in some 
places, though there .is probably a concealed 
core of rock a little beneath the surface, and it 
is of diluvian origin, excepting a small portion 
at the extremity and elsewhere along the shores, 
which is alluvial. For the first half of the 
Cape large blocks of stone are found, here and 
there, mixed with the sand, but for the last 
thirty miles boulders, or even gravel, are rarely 
met with. Hitchcock conjectures that the ocean 
has, in course of time, eaten out Boston Harbor 
and other bays in the mainland, and that the 
minute fragments have been deposited by the 
currents at a distance from the shore, and 
formed this sand-bank. Above the sand, if the 
surface is subjected to agricultural tests, there 
is found to be a thin layer of soil gradually 
diminishing from Barnstable to Truro, where it 
ceases; but there are many holes and rents in 
this weather-beaten garment not likely to be 



22 CAPE COD 

stitched in time, which reveal the naked flesh of 
the Cape, and its extremity is completely bare. 

I at once got out my book, the eighth volume 
of the Collections of the Massachusetts Histori- 
cal Society, printed in 1802, which contains 
some short notices of the Cape towns, and be- 
gan to read up to where I was, for in the cars I 
could not read as fast as I traveled. To those 
who came from the side of Plymouth, it said, 
"After riding through a body of woods, twelve 
miles in extent, interspersed with but few 
houses, the settlement of Sandwich appears, 
with a more agreeable effect, to the eye of the 
traveler." Another writer speaks of this as a 
beautiful village. But I think that our villages 
will bear to be contrasted only with one another, 
not with Nature. I have no great respect for 
the writer's taste, who talks easily about beau- 
tiful villages, embellished, perchance, with a 
"fulling-mill," "a handsome academy," or a 
meeting-house, and "a number of shops for the 
different mechanic arts;" where the green and 
white houses of the gentry, drawn up in rows, 
front on a street of which it would be difficult 
to tell whether it is most like a desert or a long 
stable -yard. Such spots can be beautiful only 
to the weary traveler, or the returning native, 
— or, perchance, the repentant misanthrope; 
not to him who, with unprejudiced senses, has 



ST A GE-COA CH VIE WS * 23 

just come out of the woods, and approaches one 
of them, by a bare road, through a succession 
of straggling homesteads where he cannot tell 
which is the almshouse. However, as for 
Sandwich, I cannot speak particularly. Ours 
was but half a Sandwich at most, and that must 
have fallen on the buttered side some time. I 
only saw that it was a closely -built town for a 
small one, with glass-works to improve its sand, 
and narrow streets in which we turned round 
and round till we could not tell which way we 
were going, and the rain came in, first on this 
side and then on that, and I saw that they in 
the houses were more comfortable than we in 
the coach. My book also said of this town, 
"The inhabitants, in general, are substantial 
livers," — that is, I suppose, they do not live 
like philosophers ; but, as the stage did not stop 
long enough for us to dine, we had no opportu- 
nity to test the truth of this statement. It may 
have referred, however, to the quantity "of oil 
they would yield." It further said, "The in- 
habitants of Sandwich generally manifest a fond 
and steady adherence to the manners, employ- 
ments and modes of living which characterized 
their fathers," which made me think that they 
were, after all, very much like all the rest of 
the world ; — and it added that this was "a re- 
semblance, which, at this day, will constitute no 



24 • CAPE COD 

impeachment of either their virtue or taste ; " 
which remark proves to me that the writer was 
one with the rest of them. No people ever lived 
by cursing their fathers, however great a curse 
their fathers might have been to them. But it 
must be confessed that ours was old authority, 
and probably they have changed all that now. 

Our route was along the Bay side, through 
Barnstable, Yarmouth, Dennis, and Brewster, 
to Orleans, with a range of low hills on our 
right, running down the Cape. The weather 
was not favorable for wayside views, but we 
made the most of such glimpses of land and 
water as we could get through the rain. The 
country was, for the most part, bare, or with 
only a little scrubby wood left on the hills. 
We noticed in Yarmouth — and, if I do not 
mistake, in Dennis — large tracts where pitch- 
pines were planted four or five years before. 
They were in rows, as they appeared when we 
were abreast of them, and, excepting that there 
were extensive vacant spaces, seemed to be 
doing remarkably well. This, we were told, 
was the only use to which such tracts could be 
profitably put. Every higher eminence had a 
pole set up on it, with an old storm-coat or sail 
tied to it, for a signal, that those on the south 
side of the Cape, for instance, might know when 
the Boston packets had arrived on the north. It 



STAGE-COACH VIEWS 26 

appeared as if this use must absorb the greater 
part of the old clothes of the Cape, leaving but 
few rags for the peddlers. The windmills on 
the hills, — large weather-stained octagonal 
structures, — and the salt-works scattered all 
along the shore, with their long rows of vats 
resting on piles driven into the marsh, their 
low, turtle-like roofs, and their slighter wind- 
mills, were novel and interesting objects to an 
inlander. The sand by the roadside was par- 
tially covered with bunches of a moss-like plant, 
Hudsonia tomentosa^ which a woman in the 
stage told us was called "poverty grass," be- 
cause it grew where nothing else would. 

I was struck by the pleasant equality which 
reigned among the stage company, and their 
broad and invulnerable good humor. They 
were what -is called free and easy, and met one 
another to advantage, as men who had, at 
length, learned how to live. They appeared to 
know each other when they were strangers, they 
were so simple and downright. They were well 
met, in an unusual sense, that is, they met aa 
well as they could meet, and did not seem to be 
troubled with any impediment. They were not 
afraid nor ashamed of one another, but were 
contented to make just such a company as the 
ingredients allowed. It was evident that the 
same foolish respect was not here claimed, for 



26 CAPE COD 

mere wealth and station, that is in many parts 
of New England; yet some of them were the 
"first people," as they are called, of the various 
towns through which we passed. Retired sea- 
captains, in easy circumstances, who talked of 
farming as sea-captains are wont; an erect, re- 
spectable, and trustworthy-looking man, in his 
wrapper, some of the salt of the earth, who had 
formerly been the salt of the sea; or a more 
courtly gentleman, who, perchance, had been a 
representative to the General Court in his day; 
or a broad, red-faced. Cape Cod man, who had 
seen too many storms to be easily irritated; or 
a fisherman's wife, who had been waiting a 
week for a coaster to leave Boston, and had at 
length come by the cars. 

A strict regard for truth obliges us to say, 
that the few women whom we saw that day 
looked exceedingly pinched up. They had 
prominent chins and noses, having lost all their 
teeth, and a sharp W would represent their 
profile. They were not so well preserved as 
their husbands; or perchance they were well 
preserved as dried specimens. (Their hus- 
bands, however, were pickled.) But we respect 
them not the less for all that; our own dental 
system is far from perfect. 

Still we kept on in the rain, or, if we stopped, 
it was commonly at a post-office, and we thought 



STAGE-COACH VIEWS 27 

that writing letters, and sorting them against 
our arrival, must be the principal employment 
of the inhabitants of the Cape this rainy clay. 
The post-office appeared a singularly domestic 
institution here. Ever and anon the stage 
stopped before some low shop or dwelling, and 
a wheelwright or shoemaker appeared in his 
shirt-sleeves and leather apron, with spectacles 
newly donned, holding up Uncle Sam's bag, as 
if it were a slice of home-made cake, for the 
travelers, while he retailed some piece of gossip 
to the driver, really as indifferent to the pres- 
ence of the former as if they were so much bag- 
gage. In one instance, we understood that a 
woman was the post-mistress, and they said that 
she made the best one on the road ; but we sus- 
pected that the letters must be subjected to a 
very close scrutiny there. While we were 
stopping, for this purpose, at Dennis, we ven- 
tured to put our heads out of the windows, to 
see where we were going, and saw rising before 
us, through the mist, singular barren hills, all 
stricken with poverty-grass, looming up as if 
they were in the horizon, though they were close 
to us, and we seemed to have got to the end of 
the land on that side, notwithstanding that the 
horses were still headed that way. Indeed, 
that part of Dennis which we saw was an exceed- 
ingly barren and desolate country, of a char- 



28 CAPE COD 

acter which I can find no name for ; such a sur- 
face, perhaps, as the bottom of the sea made 
dry hind day before yesterday. It was covered 
with poverty-grass, and there was hardly a tree 
in sight, but here and there a little weather- 
stained, one-storied house, with a red roof, — 
for often the roof was painted, though the rest 
of the house was not, — standing bleak and 
cheerless, yet with a broad foundation to the 
land, where the comfort must have been all in- 
side. Yet we read in the Gazetteer, — for we 
carried that too with us, — that, in 1837, one 
hundred and fifty masters of vessels, belonging 
to this town, sailed from the various ports of 
the Union. There must be many more houses 
in the south part of the town, else we cannot 
imagine where they all lodge when they are at 
home, if ever they are there; but the truth is, 
their houses are floating ones, and their home is 
on the ocean. There were almost no trees at 
all in this part of Dennis, nor could I learn that 
they talked of setting out any. It is true, there 
was a meeting-house, set round with Lombardy 
poplars, in a hollow square, the rows fully as 
straight as the studs of a building, and the cor- 
ners as square; but, if I do not mistake, every 
one of them was dead. I could not help think- 
ing that they needed a revival here. Our bool^ 
said that, in 1795, there was erected in Dennis 



STAGE-COACH VIEWS 29 

" an elegant meeting-house, with a steeple." 
Perhaps this was the one ; though whether it 
had a steeple, or had died down so far from 
sympathy with the poplars, I do not remember. 
Another meeting-house in this town was de- 
scribed as a " neat building ; " but of the meet- 
ing-house in Chatham, a neighboring town, for 
there was then but one, nothing is said, except 
that it '* is in good repair," — both which re- 
marks, I trust, may be understood as applying 
to the churches spiritual as well as material. 
However, " elegant meeting-houses," from that 
Trinity one on Broadway, to this at Nobscus- 
set, in my estimation, belong to the same cate- 
gory with " beautiful villages." I was never in 
season to see one. Handsome is that handsome 
does. What they did for shade here, in warm 
weather, we did not know, though we read that 
" fogs are more frequent in Chatham than in 
any other part of the country ; and they serve 
in summer, instead of trees, to shelter the houses 
against the heat of the sun. To those who de- 
light in extensive vision," — is it to be inferred 
that the inhabitants of Chatham do not ? — 
" they are unpleasant, but they are not found 
to be unhealthful." Probably, also, the unob- 
structed sea-breeze answers the purpose of a fan. 
The historian of Chatham says further, that " in 
many families there is no difference between the 



30 CAPE COD 

breakfast and supper; cheese, cakes, and pies 
belnfj as common at the one as at the other." 
But that leaves us still uncertain whether they 
were really common at either. 

The road, which was quite hilly, here ran 
near the Bay-shore, having the Bay on one side, 
and "the rough hill of Scargo," said to be the 
highest land on the Cape, on the other. Of the 
wide prospect of the Bay afforded by the sum- 
mit of this hill, our guide says, "The view has 
not much of the beautiful in it, but it commu- 
nicates a strong emotion of the sublime." That 
is the kind of communication which we love to 
have made to us. We passed through the vil- 
lage of Suet, in Dennis, on Suet and Quivet 
Necks, of which it is said, "when compared with 
Nobscusset," — we had a misty recollection of 
having passed through, or near to, the latter, 
— " it may be denominated a pleasant village ; 
but, in comparison with the village of Sandwich, 
there is little or no beauty in it." However, we 
liked Dennis well, better than any town we had 
seen on the Cape, it was so novel, and, in that 
stormy day, so sublimely dreary. 

Captain John Sears, of Suet, was the first 
person in this country who obtained pure marine 
salt by solar evaporation alone ; though it had 
long been made in a similar way on the coast of 
France, and elsewhere. This was in the year 



STAGE-COACH VIEWS 31 

1776, at which time, on account of the war, salt 
was scarce and dear. The Historical Collec- 
tions contain an interesting account of his ex- 
periments, which we read when we first saw the 
roofs of the salt-works. Barnstable County is 
the most favorable locality for these works on 
our northern coast, — there is so little fresh 
water here emptying into ocean. Quite recently 
there were about two millions of dollars invested 
in this business here. But now the Cape is un- 
able to compete with the importers of salt and 
the manufacturers of it at the West, and, ac- 
cordingly, her salt-works are fast going to de- 
cay. From making salt, they turn to fishing 
more than ever. The Gazetteer will uniformly 
tell you, under the head of each town, how many 
go a-fishing, and the value of the fish and oil 
taken, how much salt is made and used, how 
many are engaged in the coasting trade, how 
many in manufacturing palm -leaf hats, leather, 
boots, shoes, and tinware, and then it has done, 
and leaves you to imagine the more truly do- 
mestic manufactures which are nearly the same 
all the world over. 

Late in the afternoon, we rode through Brews- 
ter, so named after Elder Brewster, for fear he 
would be forgotten else. Who has not heard 
of Elder Brewster ? Who knows who he was ? 
This appeared to be the modern -built town of 



32 CAPE COD 

the Cape, the favorite residence of retired sea« 
captains. It is said that "there are more mas- 
ters and mates of vessels which sail on foreign 
voyages belonging to this place than to any other 
town in the country." There were many of the 
modern American houses here, such as they turn 
out at Cambridgeport, standing on the sand; 
you could almost swear that they had been 
floated down Charles River, and drifted across 
the bay. I call them American, because they 
are paid for by Americans, and "put up" by 
American carpenters; but they are little re- 
moved from lumber; only Eastern stuff dis- 
guised with white paint, the least interesting 
kind of drift-wood to me. Perhaps we have 
reason to be proud of our naval architecture, and 
need not go to the Greeks, or the Goths, or the 
Italians, for the models of our vessels. Sea- 
captains do not employ a Cambridgeport car- 
penter to build their floating houses, and for 
their houses on shore, if they must copy any, it 
would be more agreeable to the imagination to 
see one of their vessels turned bottom upward, 
in the Numidian fashion. We read that, "at 
certain seasons, the reflection of the sun upon 
the windows of the houses in Wellfleet and Truro 
(across the inner side of the elbow of the Cape) 
is discernible with the naked eye, at a distance 
of eighteen miles and upward, on the county 



STAGE-COACH VIEWS 83 

road." This we were pleased to imagine, as we 
had not seen the sun for twenty -four hours. 

The same author (the Rev. John Simpkins) 
said of the inhabitants, a good while ago : " No 
persons appear to have a greater relish for the 
social circle and domestic pleasures. They are 
not in the habit of frequenting taverns, unless 
on public occasions. I know not of a proper 
idler or tavern -haunter in the place." This is 
more than can be said of my townsmen. 

At length, we stopped for the night at Hig- 
gins's tavern, in Orleans, feeling very much as 
if we were on a sand-bar in the ocean, and not 
knowing: whether we should see land or water 
ahead when the mist cleared away. We here 
overtook two Italian boys, who had waded thus 
far down the Cape through the sand, with their 
organs on their backs, and were going on to 
Provincetown. What a hard lot, we thought, 
if the Provincetown people should shut their 
doors against them! Whose yard would they 
go to next? Yet we concluded that they had 
chosen wisely to come here, where other music 
than that of the surf must be rare. Thus the 
great civilizer sends out his emissaries, sooner or 
later, to every sandy cape and light-house of the 
New World which the census-taker visits, and 
summons the savage there to surrender. 



ni 

THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 

The next morning, Thursday, October 11, it 
rained as hard as ever; but we were determined 
to proceed on foot, nevertheless. We first 
made some inquiries, with regard to the practi- 
cability of walking up the shore on the Atlantic 
side to Provincetown, whether we should meet 
with any creeks or marshes to trouble us. Hig- 
gins said that there was no obstruction, and that 
it was not much farther than by the road, but he 
thought that we should find it very "heavy" 
walking in the sand ; it was bad enough in the 
road, a horse would sink in up to the fetlocks 
there. But there was one man at the tavern 
who had Walked it, and he said that we could 
go very well, though it was sometimes inconven- 
ient and even dangerous walking under the 
bank, when there was a great tide, with an east- 
erly wind, which caused the sand to cave. For 
the first four or five miles we followed the road, 
which here turns to the north on the elbow, — • 
the narrowest part of the Cape, — that we might 
clear an inlet from the ocean, a part of Nauset 



THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 35 

Harbor, in Orleans, on our right. We found 
the traveling good enough for walkers on the 
sides of the roads, though it was "heavy" for 
horses in the middle. We walked with our um- 
brellas behind us since it blowed hard as well as 
rained, with driving mists, as the day before, 
and the wind helped us over the sand at a rapid 
rate. Everything indicated that we had reached 
a strange shore. The road was a mere lane, 
winding over bare swells of bleak and barren - 
looking land. The houses were few and far be- 
tween, besides being small and rusty, though 
they appeared to be kept in good repair, and 
their door-yards, which were the unfenced Cape, 
were tidy ; or, rather, they looked as if the 
ground around them was blown clean by the 
wind. Perhaps the scarcity of wood here, and 
the consequent absence of the wood-pile and 
other wooden traps, had something to do with 
this appearance. They seemed, like mariners 
ashore, to have sat right down to enjoy the firm- 
ness of the land, without studying their postures 
or habiliments. To them it was merely tery^a 
firma and cogriita, not yet feyiilis Sindjucimda. 
Every landscape which is dreary enough has a 
certain beauty to my eyes, and in this instance 
its permanent qualities were enhanced by the 
weather. Everything told of the sea, even 
when we did not see its waste or hear its roar. 



36 CAPE COD 

For birds there were gulls, and for carts in iKe 
fields, boats turned bottom upward against the 
houses, and sometimes the rib of a whale was 
woven into the fence by the roadside. The 
trees were, if possible, rarer than the houses, 
excepting apple-trees, of which there were a 
few small orchards in the hollows. These were 
either narrow and high, with flat tops, having 
lost their side branches, like huge plum-bushes 
growing in exposed situations, or else dwarfed 
and branching immediately at the ground, like 
quince-bushes. They suggested that, under 
like circumstances, all trees would at last ac- 
quire like habits of growth. I afterward saw 
on the Cape many full-grown apple-trees not 
higher than a man's head; one whole orchard, 
indeed, where all the fruit could have been 
gathered by a man standing on the ground ; but 
you could hardly creep beneath the trees. 
Some, which the owners told me were twenty 
years old, were only three and a half feet high, 
spreading at six inches from the ground five 
feet each way, and being withal surrounded 
with boxes of tar to catch the canker-worms, 
they looked like plants in flower-pots, and as if 
they might be taken into the house in the winter. 
In another place, I saw some not much larger 
than currant-bushes ; yet the owner told me that 
they had borne a barrel and a half of apples 



THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 37 

that fall. If they had been placed close to- 
gether, I could have cleared them all at a jump. 
I measured some near the Highland Light in 
Truro, which had been taken from the shrubby 
woods thereabouts when young, and grafted. 
One, which had been set ten years, was on an 
average eighteen inches high, and spread nine 
feet, with a flat top. It had borne one bushel of 
apples two years before. Another, probably 
twenty years old from the seed, was five feet 
high, and spread eighteen feet, branching, as 
usual, at the ground, so that you could not creep 
under it. This bore a barrel of ajjples two 
years before. The owner of these trees invari- 
ably used the personal pronoun in speaking of 
them; as, "I got him out of the woods, but he 
doesn't bear." The largest that I saw in that 
neighborhood was nine feet high to the topmost 
leaf, and spread thirty -three feet, branching at 
the ground five ways. 

In one yard I observed a single, very healthy- 
looking tree, while all the rest were dead or dy- 
ing. The occupant said that his father had 
manured all but that one with blacktish. 

This habit of growth should, no doubt, be 
encouraged, and they should not be trimmed 
up, as some traveling practitioners have ad- 
vised. In 1802 there was not a single fruit-tree 
in Chatham, the next town to Orleans, on the 



38 CAPE COD 

south; and the old account of Orleans says: 
"Fruit-trees cannot be made to grow within a 
mile of the ocean. Even those which are placed 
at a greater distance are injured by the east 
winds; and, after violent storms in the spring, 
a saltish taste is perceptible on their bark." 
We noticed that they were often covered with a 
yellow lichen like rust, the Parmelia i^arietina. 
The most foreign and picturesque structures 
on the Cape, to an inlander, not excepting the 
salt-works, are the wind-mills, — gray -looking, 
octagonal towers, with long timbers slanting to 
the ground in the rear, and there resting on a 
cart-wheel, by which their fans are turned 
round to face the wind. These appeared also 
to serve in some measure for props against its 
force. A great circular rut was worn around 
the building by the wheel. The neighbors who 
assemble to turn the mill to the wind are likely 
to know which way it blows, without a weather- 
cock. They looked loose and slightly locomo- 
tive, like huge wounded birds, trailing a wing 
or a leg, and reminded one of pictures of the 
Netherlands. Being on elevated ground, and 
high in themselves, they serve as landmarks, — 
for there are no tall trees, or other objects com- 
monly, which can be seen at a distance in the 
horizon ; though the outline of the land itself is 
so firm and distinct, that an insignificant cone, 



f-^\mifiih,iii 








OLD MILL, EASTHAM 



THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 39 

or even precipice of sand, is visible at a great 
distance from over the sea. Sailors making the 
land commonly steer either by the wind mills, 
or the meeting-houses. In the country, we are 
obliged to steer by the meeting-houses alone. 
Yet the meeting-house is a kind of wind mill, 
which runs one day in seven, turned either by 
the winds of doctrine or public opinion, or more 
rarely by the winds of Heaven, where another 
sort of grist is ground, of which, if it be not all 
bran or musty, if it be not plaster^ we trust to 
make bread of life. 

There were, here and there, heaps of shells 
in the fields, where clams had been opened for 
bait; for Orleans is famous for its shell-fish, 
especially clams, or, as our author says, "to 
speak more properly, worms." The shores are 
more fertile than the dry land. The inhabi- 
tants measure their crops, not only by bushels 
of corn, but by barrels of clams. A thousand 
barrels of clam-bait are counted as equal in 
value to six or eight thousand bushels of Indian 
corn, and once they were procured without 
more labor or expense, and the supply was 
thought to be inexhaustible. "For," runs the 
history, "after a portion of the shore has been 
dug over, and almost all the clams taken up, at 
the end of two years, it is said, they are as 
plenty there as ever. It is even affirmed by 



40 CAPE COD 

many persons, that it is as necessary to stir the 
clam ground frequently as it is to hoe a field of 
potatoes; because, if this labor is omitted, the 
clams will be crowded too closely together, and 
will be prevented from increasing in size." But 
we were told that the small clam, Mya arenaria^ 
was not so plenty here as formerly. Probably 
the clam -ground has been stirred too frequently, 
after all. Nevertheless, one man, who com- 
plained that they fed pigs with them and so 
made them scarce, told me that he dug and 
opened one hundred and twenty-six dollars' 
worth in one winter, in Truro. 

We crossed a brook, not more than fourteen 
rods long between Orleans and Eastham called 
Jeremiah's Gutter. The Atlantic is said some- 
times to meet the Bay here, and isolate the 
northern part of the Cape. The streams of the 
Cape are necessarily formed on a minute scale 
since there is no room for them to run, without 
tumbling immediately into the sea ; and beside, 
we found it difficult to run ourselves in that 
sand, when there was no want of room. Hence, 
the least channel where water runs, or may run, 
is important, and is dignified with a name. 
We read that there is no running water in 
Chatham, which is the next town. The barren 
aspect of the land would hardly be believed if 
described. It was such soil, or rather land, as^ 



THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 41 

to judge from appearances, no farmer in the in- 
terior would think of cultivating, or even fenc- 
ing. Generally, the ploughed fields of the Cape 
look white and yellow, like a mixture of salt 
and Indian meal. This is called soil. All an 
inlander's notions of soil and fertility will be 
confounded by a visit to these parts, and he will 
not be able, for some time afterward, to distin- 
guish soil from sand. The historian of Chatham 
says of a part of that town, which has been 
gained from the sea : " There is a doubtful ap- 
pearance of a soil beginning to be formed. It 
is styled doubtful^ because it would not be ob- 
served by every eye, and perhaps not acknow- 
ledged by many." We thought that this would 
not be a bad description of the greater part of 
the Cape. There is a "beach " on the west side 
of Eastham, which we crossed the next summer, 
half a mile wide, and stretching across the town- 
ship, containing seventeen hundred acres on 
which there is not now a particle of vegetable 
mould, though it formerly produced wheat. All 
sands are here called "beaches," whether they 
are waves of water or of air that dash against 
them, since they commonly have their origin on 
the shore. "The sand in some places," says 
the historian of Eastham, "lodging against the 
beach-grass, has been raised into hills fifty feet 
high, where twenty-five years ago no hills ex 



42 CAPE COD 

isted. In others it has filled up small valleys, 
and swamps. Where a strong - rooted bush 
stood, the appearance is singular; a mass of 
earth and sand adheres to it, resembling a small 
tower. In several places, rocks, which were 
formerly covered with soil, are disclosed, and 
being lashed by the sand, driven against them 
by the wind, look as if they were recently dug 
from a quarry." 

We were surprised to hear of the great crops 
of corn which are still raised in Eastham, not- 
withstanding the real and apparent barrenness. 
Our landlord in Orleans had told us that he 
raised three or four hundred bushels of corn 
annually, and also of the great number of pigs 
which he fattened. In Champlain's "Voyages," 
there is a plate representing the Indian corn- 
fields hereabouts, with their wigwams in the 
midst, as they appeared in 1605, and it was 
here that the Pilgrims, to quote their own 
words, "bought eight or ten hogsheads of corn 
and beans" of the Nauset Indians, in 1622, to 
keep themselves from starving.^ "In 1667 the 

1 They touched after this at a place called Mattachiest, 
where they got more corn ; but their shallop being' cast away 
in a storm, the Governor was obliged to return to Plymouth on 
foot, fifty miles through the woods. According to Mourt's Re- 
lation, "he came safely home, though weary and surbated,^^ 
that is, foot-sore. (Ital. sobattere, Lat. sub or solea battere, to 
bruise the soles of the feet ; v. Die. Not " from acerbatus, em- 



THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 43 

town [of Eastham] voted that every housekeeper 
should kill twelve blackbirds, or three crows, 
which did great damage to the corn, and this 
vote was repeated for many years." In 1695 
an additional order was passed, namely, that 
"every unmarried man in the township shall kill 
six blackbirds, or three crows, while he remains 
single; as a penalty for not doing it, shall not 
be married until he obey this order." The 
blackbirds, however, still molest the corn. I 
saw them at it the next summer, and there were 
many scarecrows, if not scare-blackbirds, in the 
fields, which I often mistook for men. From 
which I concluded, that either many men were 
not married, or many blackbirds were. Yet 
they put but three or four kernels in a hill, and 
let fewer plants remain than we do. In the ac- 
count of Eastham, in the "Historical Collec- 
tions," printed in 1802, it is said, that "more 
corn is produced than the inhabitants consume, 
and above a thousand bushels are annually sent 
to market. The soil being free from stones, a 
plough passes through it speedily ; and after the 
corn has come up, a small Cape horse, somewhat 

bittered or ag-grieved," as one commentator on this passage 
supposes.) This word is of very rare occurrence, being applied 
only to governors and persons of like description, who are in 
that predicament ; though such generally have considerable 
mileage allowed them, and might save their soles if they 
eared. 



44 CAPE COD 

larger than a goat, will, with the assistance of 
two boys, easily hoe three or four acres in a 
day; several farmers are accustomed to produce 
five hundred bushels of grain annually, and not 
long since one raised eight hundred bushels on 
sixty acres." Similar accounts are given to> 
day; indeed, the recent accounts are in some 
instances suspectable repetitions of the old, and 
I have no doubt that their statements are as 
often founded on the exception as the rule, and 
that by far the greater number of acres are as 
barren as they appear to be. It is sufficiently 
remarkable that any crops can be raised here, 
and it may be owing, as others have suggested, 
to the amount of moisture in the atmosphere, 
the warmth of the sand, and the rareness of 
frosts. A miller, who was sharpening his 
stones, told me that, forty years ago, he had 
been to a husking here, where five hundred 
bushels were husked in one evening, and the 
corn was piled six feet high or more, in the 
midst, but now, fifteen or eighteen bushels to 
an acre were an average yield. I never saw 
fields of such puny and unpromising-looking 
corn, as in this town. Probably the inhabi- 
tants are contented with small crops from a 
great surface easily cultivated. It is not always 
the most fertile land that is the most profitable, 
aud this sand may repay cultivation, as well as 



THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 45 

the fertile bottoms of the West. It is said, 
moreover, that the vegetables raised in the sand, 
without manure, are remarkably sweet, the 
pumpkins especially, though when their seed is 
planted in the interior they soon degenerate. I 
can testify that the vegetables here, when they 
succeed at all, look remarkably green and 
healthy, though perhaps it is partly by contrast 
with the sand. Yet the inhabitants of the Cape 
towns, generally, do not raise their own meal 
or pork. Their gardens are commonly little 
patches, that have been redeemed from the 
edges of the marshes and swamps. 

All the morning we had heard the sea roar 
on the eastern shore, which was several miles 
distant ; for it still felt the effects of the storm 
in which the St. John was wrecked, — though a 
school-boy, whom we overtook, hardly knew 
what we meant, his ears were so used to it. He 
would have more plainly heard the same sound 
in a shell. It was a very inspiriting sound to 
walk by, filling the whole air, that of the sea 
dashing against the land, heard several miles 
inland. Instead of having a dog to growl be- 
fore your door, to have an Atlantic Ocean to 
growl for a whole Cape! On the whole, we 
were glad of the storm, which would show us 
the ocean in its angriest mood. Charles Darwin 
was assured that the roar of the surf on the 



46 CAPE COD 

coast of Chiloe, after a heavy gale, could be 
heard at night a distance of "21 sea miles 
across a hilly and wooded country." We con- 
versed with the boy we have mentioned, who 
might have been eight years old, making him 
walk the while under the lee of our umbrella; 
for we thought it as important to know what 
was life on the Cape to a boy as to a man. 
We learned from him where the best grapes 
were to be found in that neighborhood. He 
was carrying his dinner in a pail; and, without 
any impertinent questions being put by us, it 
did at length appear of what it consisted. The 
homeliest facts are always the most acceptable to 
an inquiring mind. At length, before we got 
to Eastham meeting-house, we left the road and 
struck across the country for the eastern shore 
at Nauset Lights, — three lights close together, 
two or three miles distant from us. They were 
so many that they might be distinguished from 
others; but this seemed a shiftless and costly 
way of accomplishing that object. We found 
ourselves at once on an apparently boundless 
plain, without a tree or a fence, or, with one or 
two exceptions, a house in sight. Instead of 
fences, the earth was sometimes thrown up into 
a slight ridge. My companion compared it to 
the rolling prairies of Illinois. In the storm of 
wind and rain which raged when we traversed 



THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 47 

it, it no doubt appeared more vast and desolate 
than it really is. As there were no hills, but 
only here and there a dry hollow in the midst 
of the waste, and the distant horizon was con- 
cealed by mist, we did not know whether it was 
high or low. A solitary traveler, whom we saw 
perambulating in the distance, loomed like a 
giant. He appeared to walk slouchingly, as if 
held up from above by straps under his shoul- 
ders, as much as supported by the plain below. 
Men and boys would have appeared alike at a 
little distance, there being no object by which 
to measure them. Indeed, to an inlander, the 
Cape landscape is a constant mirage. This 
kind of country extended a mile or two each 
way. These were the "Plains of Nauset," once 
covered with wood, where in winter the winds 
howl and the snow blows right merrily in the 
face of the traveler. I was glad to have got out 
of the towns, where I am wont to feel unspeak- 
ably mean and disgraced, — to have left behind 
me for a season the bar-rooms of Massachusetts, 
where the full-grown are not weaned from sav- 
age and filthy habits, — still sucking a cigar. 
My spirits rose in proportion to the outward 
dreariness. The towns need to be ventilated. 
The gods would be pleased to see some pure 
flames from their altars. They are not to be 
appeased with cigar-smoke. 



48 CAPE COD 

As we thus skirted the back-side of the 
towns, for we did not enter any village, till we 
got to Provincetown, we read their histories un- 
der our umbrellas, rarely meeting anybody. 
The old accounts are the richest in topography, 
which was what we wanted most; and, indeed, 
in most things else, for I find that the readable 
parts of the modern accounts of these towns con- 
sist, in a great measure, of quotations, acknow- 
ledged and unacknowledged, from the older 
ones, without any additional information of 
equal interest ; — town histories, which at length 
run into a history of the Church of that place, 
that being the only story they have to tell, and 
conclude by quoting the Latin epitaphs of the 
old pastors, having been written in the good 
old days of Latin and of Greek. They will go 
back to the ordination of every minister, and 
tell you faithfully who made the introductory 
prayer, and who delivered the sermon; who 
made the ordaining prayer, and who gave the 
charge ; who extended the right hand of fellow- 
ship, and who pronounced the benediction ; also 
how many ecclesiastical councils convened from 
time to time to inquire into the orthodoxy of 
some minister, and the names of all who com- 
posed them. As it will take us an hour to get 
over this plain, and there is no variety in the 
prospect, peculiar as it is, I will read a little in 
the history of Eastham the while. 



THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 49 

When the committee from Plymouth had pur- 
chased the territory of Eastham of the Indians, 
"it was demanded, who laid claim to Billings- 
gate?" which was understood to be all that part 
of the Cape north of what they had purchased. 
" The answer was, there was not any who owned 
it. 'Then,' said the committee, 'that land is 
ours.' The Indians answered, that it was." 
This was a remarkable assertion and admission. 
The Pilgrims appear to have regarded them- 
selves as Not Any's representatives. Perhaps 
this was the first instance of that quiet way of 
"speaking for" a place not yet occupied, or at 
least not improved as much as it may be, which 
their descendants have practiced, and are still 
practicing so extensively. Not Any seems to 
have been the sole proprietor of all America be- 
fore the Yankees. But history says, that when 
the Pilgrims had held the lands of Billingsgate 
many years, at length, "appeared an Indian, 
who styled himself Lieutenant Anthony," who 
laid claim to them, and of him they bought 
them. Who knows but a Lieutenant Anthony 
may be knocking at the door of the White 
House some day? At any rate, I know that if 
you hold a thing unjustly, there will surely be 
the devil to pay at last. 

Thomas Prince, who was several times the 
governor of the Plymouth colony, was the 



50 CAPE COD 

leader of the settlement of Eastham. There 
was recently standing, on what was once his 
farm, in this town, a pear-tree which is said to 
have been brought from England, and planted 
there by him, about two hundred years ago. It 
was blown down a few months before we were 
there. A late account says that it was recently 
in a vigorous state ; the fruit small, but excel- 
lent ; and it yielded on an average fifteen bush- 
els. Some appropriate lines have been ad- 
dressed to it, by a Mr. Henian Doane, from 
which I will quote, partly because they are the 
only specimen of Cape Cod verse which I re- 
member to have seen, and partly because they 
are not bad. 

" Two hundred years have, on the wings of Time, 

Passed with their joys and woes, since thou, Old Tree ! 
Put forth thy first leaves in this foreign clime. 
Transplanted from the soil beyond the sea." 

******** 

[These stars represent the more clerical lines, 
and also those which have deceased.] 

" That exiled band long since have passed away, 
And still, old Tree ! thou standest in the place 
Where Prince's hand did plant thee in his day, — 

An undesigned memorial of his race 
And time ; of those our honored fathers, when 

They came from Plymouth o'er and settled here ; 
Doane, Higgins, Snow, and other worthy men. 
Whose names their sons remember to revere. 
******** 



THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 51 

" Old Time has thinned thy boughs, Old Pilgrim Tree I 
And bowed thee with the weight of many years ; 
Yet, 'mid the frosts of age, thy bloom we see, 
And yearly still thy mellow fruit appears." 

There are some other lines which I might 
quote, if they were not tied to unworthy com- 
panions, by the rhyme. When one ox will lie 
down, the yoke bears hard on him that stands 
up. 

One of the first settlers of Eastham was Dea- 
con John Doane, who died in 1707, aged one 
hundred and ten. Tradition says that he was 
rocked in a cradle several of his last years. 
That, certainly, was not an Achillean life. His 
mother must have let him slip when she dipped 
him into the liquor which was to make him in- 
vulnerable, and he went in, heels and all. Some 
of the stone-bounds to his farm, which he set up, 
are standing to-day, with his initials cut in 
them. 

The ecclesiastical history of this town inter- 
ested us somewhat. It appears that "they very 
early built a small meeting-house, twenty feet 
square, with a thatched roof through which they 
might fire their muskets," — of course, at the 
Devil. "In 1662, the town agreed that a part 
of every whale cast on shore be appropriated for 
the support of the ministry." No doubt there 
seemed to be some propriety in thus leaving the 



62 CAPE COD 

support of the ministers to Providence, whose 
servants they are, and who alone rules the 
storms ; for, when few whales were cast up, they 
might suspect that their worship was not accept- 
able. The ministers must have sat upon the 
cliffs in every storm, and watched the shore 
with anxiety. And, for my part, if I were a 
minister, I would rather trust to the bowels of 
the billows, on the back-side of Cape Cod, to 
cast up a whale for me, than to the generosity 
of many a country parish that I know. You 
cannot say of a country minister's salary, com- 
monly, that it is "very like a whale." Never- 
theless, the minister who depended on whales 
cast up must have had a trying time of it. I 
would rather have gone to the Falkland Isles with 
a harpoon, and done with it. Think of a whale 
having the breath of life beaten out of him by 
a storm, and dragging in over the bars and 
guzzles, for the support of the ministry ! What 
a consolation it must have been to him ! I have 
heard of a minister, who had been a fisherman, 
being settled in Bridge water for as long a time 
as he could tell a cod from a haddock. Gener- 
ous as it seems, this condition would empty most 
country pulpits forthwith, for it is long since 
the fishers of men were fishermen. Also, a duty 
was put on mackerel here to support a free- 
school; in other words, the mackerel-school was 



THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 53 

taxed in order that the children's school might 
be free. "In 16G5 the Court passed a law to 
inflict corporal punishment on all persons, who 
resided in the towns of this government, who 
denied the Scriptures." Think of a man being 
whipped on a spring morning, till he was con- 
strained to confess that the Scriptures were true ! 
"It was also voted by the town, that all persons 
who should stand out of the meeting-house dur- 
ing the time of divine service should be set in 
the stocks." It behooved such a town to see 
that sitting in the meeting-house was nothing 
akin to sitting in the stocks, lest the penalty of 
obedience to the law might be greater than that 
of disobedience. This was the Eastham famous 
of late years for its camp-meetings, held in a 
grove near by, to which thousands flock from all 
parts of the Bay. We conjectured that the 
reason for the perhaps unusual, if not unhealth- 
ful development of the religious sentiment here, 
was the fact that a large portion of the popula- 
tion are women whose husbands and sons are 
either abroad on the sea, or else drowned, and 
there is nobody but they and the ministers left 
behind. The old account says that "hysteric 
fits are very common in Orleans, Eastham, and 
the towns below, particularly on Sunday, in the 
time of divine service. When one woman is 
alfected, five or six others generally sympathize 



54 CAPE COD 

with her; and the congregation is thrown into 
the utmost confusion. Several old men suppose, 
unphilosophically and uncharitably, perhaj)s, 
that the will is partly concerned, and that ridi- 
cule and threats would have a tendency to pre- 
vent the evil." How this is now we did not 
learn. We saw one singularly masculine woman, 
however, in a house on this very plain, who did 
not look as if she was ever troubled with hyster- 
ics, or sympathized Avith those that were; or, 
perchance, life itself was to her a hysteric fit, — 
a Nauset woman, of a hardness and coarseness 
such as no man ever possesses or suggests. It 
was enough to see the vertebrae and sinews of 
her neck, and her set jaws of iron, which would 
have bitten a board -nail in two in their ordinary 
action, — braced against the world, talking like 
a man-of-war 's-man in petticoats, or as if shout- 
ing to you through a breaker; who looked as if 
it made her head ache to live ; hard enough for 
any enormity. I looked upon her as one who 
had committed infanticide; who never had a 
brother, unless it were some wee thing that died 
in infancy, — for what need of him ? — and 
whose father must have died before she was 
born. This woman told us that the camp-meet- 
ings were not held the previous summer for fear 
of introducing the cholera, and that they would 
have been held earlier this summer, but the rye 



THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 55 

was so backward that straw would not have been 
ready for them ; for they lie in straw. There 
are sometimes one hundred and fifty ministers, 
(!) and five thousand hearers, assembled. The 
ground, which is called Millennium Grove, is 
owned by a company in Boston, and is the most 
suitable, or rather unsuitable, for this purpose 
of any that I saw on the Cape. It is fenced, 
and the frames of the tents are, at all times, to 
be seen interspersed among the oaks. They 
have an oven and a pump, and keep all their 
kitchen utensils and tent coverings and furni- 
ture in a permanent building on the spot. 
They select a time for their meetings, when the 
moon is full. A man is appointed to clear out 
the pump a week beforehand, while the ministers 
are clearing their throats; but, probably, the 
latter do not always deliver as pure a stream as 
the former. I saw the heaps of clam-shells left 
under the tables, where they had feasted in pre- 
vious summers, and supposed, of course, that 
that was the work of the unconverted, or the 
backsliders and scoffers. It looked as if a 
camp-meeting must be a singular combination 
of a prayer-meeting and a picnic. 

The first minister settled here was the Rev. 
Samuel Treat, in 1672, a gentleman who is said 
to be " entitled to a distinguished rank among 
the evangelists of New England." He con- 



66 CAPE COD 

verted many Indians, as well as white men, in 
his day, and translated the Confession of Faith 
into the Nauset language. These were the In- 
dians concerning whom their first teacher, 
Richard Bourne, wrote to Gooldn, in 1674, that 
he had been to see one who was sick, " and there 
came from him very savory and heavenly expres- 
sions," but, with regard to the mass of them, 
he says, "the truth is, that many of them are 
very loose in their course, to my heart-breaking- 
sorrow." Mr. Treat is described as a Calvinist 
of the strictest kind, not one of those who, by 
giving up or explaining away, become like a 
porcupine disarmed of its quills, but a consistent 
Calvinist, who can dart his quills to a distance 
and courageously defend himself. There exists 
a volume of his sermons in manuscript "which," 
says a commentator, "appear to have been de- 
signed for publication." I quote the following 
sentences at second hand, from a Discourse on 
Luke xvi. 23, addressed to sinners : — 

"Thou must erelong go to the bottomless pit. 
Hell hath enlarged herself, and is ready to re- 
ceive thee. There is room enough for thy en- 
tertainment. . . . 

" Consider, thou art going to a place prepared 
by God on purpose to exalt his justice in, — a 
place made for no other employment but tor- 
ments. Hell is God's house of correction; and, 



THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 57 

remember, God doth all things like himself. 
When God would show his justice and what is 
the weight of his wrath, he makes a hell where 
it shall, indeed, appear to purpose. . . . Woe 
to thy soul when thou shalt be set up as a butt 
for the arrows of the Almighty. . . . 

" Consider, God himself shall be the principal 
igent in thy misery, — his breath is the bellows 
which blows up the flame cf hell forever; — and 
if he punish thee, if he meet thee in his fury, 
he will not meet thee as a man; he will give 
thee an omnipotent blow." 

" Some think sinning ends with this life ; but 
it is a mistake. The creature is held under an 
everlasting law; the damned increase in sin in 
hell. Possibly, the mention of this may please 
thee. But, remember, there shall be no pleas- 
ant sins there; no eating, drinking, singing, 
dancing, wanton dalliance, and drinking stolen 
waters; but damned sins, bitter, hellish sins; 
sins exasperated by torments, cursing God, 
spite, rage, and blasphemy. — The guilt of all 
thy sins shall be laid upon thy soul, and be 
made so many heaps of fuel. . . . 

• "Sinner, I beseech thee, realize the truth of 
these things. Do not go about to dream that 
this is derogatory to God's mercy, and nothing 
but a vain fable to scare children out of their 
wits withal. God can be merciful, though he 



68 CAPE COD 

make tliee miserable. He shall have monu- 
ments enough of that precious attribute, shining 
like stars in the place of glory, and singing- 
eternal hallelujahs to the praise of Him that re- 
deemed them, though, to exalt the power of his 
justice, he damn sinners heaps upon heaps." 

"But," continues the same writer, "with the 
advantage of proclaiming the doctrine of terror, 
which is naturally productive of a sublime and 
impressive style of eloquence ('Triumphat ven- 
toso gloriae curru orator, qui pectus angit, ir- 
ritat, et implet terroribus.' Yid. Burnet, De 
Stat. Mort., p. 309), he could not attain the 
character of a popular preacher. His voice 
was so loud, that it could be heard at a great 
distance from the meeting-house, even amidst 
the shrieks of hysterical women, and the winds 
that howled over the plains of Nauset; but 
there was no more music in it than in the dis- 
cordant sounds with which it was mingled." 

" The effect of his preaching," it is said, 
" was that his hearers were several times, in the 
course of his ministry, awakened and alarmed ; " 
and on one occasion a comparatively innocent 
young man was frightened nearly out of lys 
wits, and Mr. Treat had to exert himself to 
make hell seem somewhat cooler to him ; yet 
we are assured that Treat's " manners were 
cheerful, his conversation pleasant, and some- 



THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 69 

times facetious, but always decent. He was 
fond of a stroke of humor, and a practical joke, 
and manifested his relish for them by long and 
loud fits of laughter." 

This was the man of whom a well-known 
anecdote is told, which doubtless many of my 
readers have heard, but which, nevertheless, I 
will venture to quote : — 

"After his marriage with the daughter of Mr. 
Willard (pastor of the South Church in Boston), 
he was sometimes invited by that gentleman to 
preach in his pulpit. Mr. Willard possessed a 
graceful delivery, a masculine and harmonious 
voice; and, though he did not gain much repu- 
tation by his 'Body of Divinity,' which is fre- 
quently sneered at, particularly by those who 
have not read it, yet in his sermons are strength 
of thought and energy of language. The natural 
consequence was that he was generally admired. 
Mr. Treat having preached one of his best dis- 
courses to the congregation of his father-in- 
law, in his usual unhappy manner, excited uni- 
versal disgust; and several nice judges waited 
on Mr. Willard, and begged that Mr. Treat, 
who was a worthy, pious man, it was true, but 
a wretched preacher, might never be invited into 
his pulpit again. To this request Mr. Willard 
made no reply ; but he desired his son-in-law to 
lend him the discourse; which, being left with 



60 CAPE COD 

him, lie delivered it without alteration to his 
people a few weeks after. . . . They flew to 
Mr. Willard and requested a copy for the press. 
'See the difference,' they cried, 'between your- 
self and your son-in-law ; you have preached a 
sermon on the same text as Mr. Treat's, but 
whilst his was contemptible, yours is excellent.' " 
As is observed in a note, '' Mr. Willard, after 
producing the sermon in the handwriting of Mr. 
Treat, might have addressed these sage critics 
in the words of Phaedrus, — 

' En hie declarat, quales sitis judices.' " ^ 

Mr. Treat died of a stroke of the palsy, just 
after the memorable storm known as the Great 
Snow, which left the ground around his house 
entirely bare, but heaped up the snow in the 
road to an uncommon height. Through this an 
arched way was dug, by which the Indians bore 
his body to the grave. 

The reader will imagine us, all the while, 
steadily traversing that extensive plain in a di- 
rection a little north of east toward Nauset 
Beach, and reading under our umbrellas as we 
sailed, while it blowed hard with mingled mist 
and rain, as if we were approaching a fit anni- 
versary of Mr. Treat's funeral. We fancied 
that it was such a moor as that on which some- 

1 Lib. V. Fab. 5. 



THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 61 

body perished in the snow, as is related in the 
"Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life." 

The next minister settled here was the "Rev. 
Samuel Osborn, who was born in Ireland, and 
educated at the University of Dublin." He is 
said to have been "a man of wisdom and vir- 
tue," and taught his people the use of peat, and 
the art of drying and preparing it, which as 
they had scarcely any other fuel, was a great 
blessing to them. He also introduced improve- 
ments in agriculture. But, notwithstanding his 
many services, as he embraced the religion of 
Arminius, some of his flock became dissatisfied. 
At length, an ecclesiastical council, consisting 
of ten ministers, with their churches, sat upon 
him, and they, naturally enough, spoiled his 
usefulness. The council convened at the desire 
of two divine philosophers, Joseph Doane and 
Nathaniel Freeman. 

In their report they say, "It appears to the 
council that the Rev. Mr. Osborn hath, in his 
preaching to this people, said, that what Christ 
did and suffered doth nothing abate or diminish 
our obligation to obey the law of God, and that 
Christ's suffering and obedience were for him- 
self; both parts of which, we think, contain 
dangerous error." 

"Also: 'It hath been said, and doth appear 
to this council, that the Rev. Mr. Osborn, both 



62 CAPE COD 

in public and in private, asserted that there are 
no promises in the Bible but what are condi- 
tional, which we think, also, to be an error, and 
do say that there are promises which are abso- 
lute and without any condition, — such as the 
promise of a new heart, and that he will write 
his law in our hearts.' " 

"Also, they say, 'it hath been alleged, and 
doth appear to us, that Mr. Osborn hath de- 
clared, that obedience is a considerable cause of 
a person's justification, which, we think, con- 
tains very dangerous error.'" 

And many the like distinctions they made, 
such as some of my readers, probably, are more 
familiar with than I am. So, far in the East, 
among the Yezidis, or Worshipers of the Devil, 
so-called, the Chaldaeans, and others, accord- 
ing to the testimony of travelers, you may still 
hear these remarkable disputations on doctri- 
nal points going on. Osborn was, accordingly, 
dismissed, and he removed to Boston, where he 
kept school for many years. But he was fully 
justified, methinks, by his works in the peat 
meadow; one proof of which is, that he lived 
to be between ninety and one hundred years old. 

The next minister was the Rev. Benjamin 
Webb, of whom, though a neighboring clergy- 
man pronounced him "the best man and the 
best minister whom he ever knew," yet the his- 
torian says, that, — 



THE PLAINS OF NAUSET 63 

"As he spent his days in the uniform dis- 
charge of his duty (it reminds one of a country 
nmster) and there were no shades to give relief 
to his character, not much can be said of him. 
(Pity the Devil did not plant a few shade-trees 
along his avenues.) His heart was as pure as 
the new-fallen snow which completely covers 
every dark spot in a field ; his mind was as se- 
rene as the sky in a mild evening in June, when 
the moon shines without a cloud. Name any 
virtue, and that virtue he practiced; name any 
vice, and that vice he shunned. But if peculiar 
qualities marked his character, they were his 
humility, his gentleness, and his love of God. 
The people had long been taught by a son of 
thunder (Mr. Treat); in him they were in- 
structed by a son of consolation, who sweetly 
allured them to virtue by soft persuasion, and 
by exhibiting the mercy of the Supreme Being ; 
for his thoughts were so much in heaven, that 
they seldom descended to the dismal regions be- 
low; and though of the same religious senti- 
ments as Mr. Treat, yet his attention was turned 
to those glad tidings of great joy which a Sav- 
iour came to publish." 

We were interested to hear that such a man 
had trodden the plains of Nauset. 

Turning over further in our book, our eyes 
fell on the name of the Rev. Jonathan Bascom 
of Orleans: "Senex emunctae naris, doctus, et 



64 CAPE COD 

auctor elegantium verborum, facetus, et diilcis 
festique sermonis." And, again, on that of the 
Eev. Nathan Stone, of Dennis: "Vir humilis, 
mitis, blandus, advenarum hospes; (there was 
need of him there;) suis commodis in terra non 
studens, reconditis thesauris in coelo." An easy 
virtue that, there, for methinks no inhabitant of 
Dennis could be very studious about his earthly 
commodity, but must regard the bulk of his 
treasures as in heaven. But probably the most 
just and pertinent character of all is that which 
appears to be given to the Rev. Ephraim 
Briggs, of Chatham, in the language of the later 
Romans, ^^ Seip, sepoese, sepoemese, wecheJcum,^* 
• — which not being interpreted, we know not 
what it means, though we have no doubt it oc- 
curs somewhere in the Scriptures, probably in 
the Apostle Eliot's Epistle to the Nipmucks. 

Let no one think that I do not love the old 
ministers. They were, probably, the best men 
of their generation, and they deserve that their 
biographies should fill the pages of the town 
histories. If I could but hear the "glad tid- 
ings " of which they tell, and which, perchance, 
they heard, I might write in a worthier strain 
than this. 

There was no better way to make the reader 
realize how wide and peculiar that plain was, and 
how long it took to traverse it, than by inserting 
these extracts in the midst of my narrative. 



IV 

THE BEACH 

At length we reached the seemingly retreat- 
ing boundary of the plain, and entered what had 
appeared at a distance an upland marsh, but 
proved to be dry sand covered with beach-grass, 
the bearberry, bayberry, shrub-oaks, and beach- 
plum, slightly ascending as we approached the 
shore; then, crossing over a belt of sand on 
which nothing grew, though the roar of the sea 
sounded scarcely louder than before, and we 
were prepared to go half a mile farther, we sud- 
denly stood on the edge of a bluff overlooking 
the Atlantic. Far below us was the beach, 
from half a dozen to a dozen rods in width, with 
a long line of breakers rushing to the strand. 
The sea was exceedingly dark and stormy, the 
sky completely overcast, the clouds still drop- 
ping rain, and the wind seemed to blow not so 
much as the exciting cause, as from sympathy 
with the already agitated ocean. The waves 
broke on the bars at some distance from the 
shore, and curving green or yellow as if over so 
many unseen dams, ten or twelve feet high, like 



66 CAPE COD 

a thousand waterfalls, rolled in foam to the 
sand. There was nothing but that savage ocean 
between us and Europe. 

Having got down the bank, and as close to 
"■jhe water as we could, where the sand was the 
lardest, leaving the Nauset Lights behind us, 
we began to walk leisurely up the beach, in 
a northwest direction, toward Provincetown, 
which was about twenty-five miles distant, still 
sailing under our umbrellas with a strong aft 
wind, admiring in silence, as we walked, the 
great force of the ocean stream, — 

Tforafiolo /xeya a6ivos ^ClKiavoio. 

The white breakers were rushing to the shore ; 
the foam ran up the sand, and then ran back, as 
far as we could see (and we imagined how much 
farther along the Atlantic coast, before and be- 
hind us), as regularly, to compare great things 
with small, as the master of a choir beats time 
with his white wand; and ever and anon a 
higher wave caused us hastily to deviate from 
our path, and we looked back on our tracks 
filled with water and foam. The breakers 
looked like droves of a thousand wild horses of 
Neptune, rushing to the shore, with their white 
manes streaming far behind; and when, at 
length, the sun shone for a moment, their manes 
were rainbow - tinted. Also, the long kelp- 



THE BEACH 67 

weed was tossed up from time to time, like the 
tails of sea-cows sporting in the brine. 

There was not a sail in sight, and we saw 
none that day, — for they had all sought har- 
bors in the late storm, and had not been able to 
get out again ; and the only human beings whom 
we saw on the beach for several days were one 
or two wreckers looking for drift-wood, and 
fragments of wrecked vessels. After an easterly 
storm in the spring, this beach is sometimes 
strewn with eastern wood from one end to the 
other, which, as it belongs to him who saves it, 
and the Cape is nearly destitute of wood, is a 
godsend to the inhabitants. We soon met one 
of these wreckers, — a regular Cape Cod man, 
with whom we parleyed, with a bleached and 
weather-beaten face, within whose wrinkles I 
distinguished no particular feature. It was like 
an old sail endowed with life, — a hanging-cliff 
of weather-beaten flesh, — like one of the clay 
boulders which occurred in that sand-bank. 
He had on a hat which had seen salt water, and 
a coat of many pieces and colors, though it was 
mainly the color of the beach, as if it had been 
sanded. His variejrated back — for his coat 
had many patches, even between the shoulders 
— was a rich study to us when we had passed 
him and looked round. It might have been dis- 
honorable for him to have so many scars behind, 



68 CAPE COD 

it is true, if he had not had many more and 
more serious ones in front. He looked as if he 
sometimes saw a doughnut, but never descended 
to comfort; too grave to laugh, too tough to 
cry ; as indifferent as a clam, — like a sea-clam 
with hat on and legs, that was out walking the 
strand. He may have been one of the Pilgrims, 
— Peregrine White, at least, — who has kept 
on the back side of the Cape, and let the cen- 
turies go by. He was looking for wrecks, old 
logs, water-logged and covered with barnacles, 
or bits of boards and joists, even chips which he 
drew out of the reach of the tide, and stacked 
up to dry. When the log was too large to carry 
far, he cut it up where the last wave had left it, 
or rolling it a few feet, appropriated it by stick- 
ing two sticks into the ground crosswise above 
it. Some rotten trunk, which in Maine cum- 
bers the ground, and is, perchance, thrown into 
the water on purpose, is here thus carefully 
picked up, split and dried, and husbanded. Be- 
fore winter the wrecker painfully carries these 
things up the bank on his shoulders by a long 
diagonal slanting path made with a hoe in the 
sand, if there is no hollow at hand. You may 
see his hooked pike-staff always lying on the 
bank, ready for use. He is the true monarch 
of the beach, whose "right there is none to dis- 
pute," and he is as much identified with it as a 
beach-bird. 



THE BEACH 69 

Crantz, in his account of Greenland, quotes 
Dalagen's relation of the ways and usages of 
the Greenlanders, and says, "Whoever finds 
drift-wood, or the spoils of a shipwreck on the 
strand, enjoys it as his own, though he does not 
live there. But he must haul it ashore and lay 
a stone upon it, as a token that some one has 
taken possession of it, and this stone is the deed 
of security, for no other Greenlander will offer 
to meddle with it afterwards." Such is the in- 
stinctive law of nations. We have also this ac- 
count of drift-wood in Crantz: "As he (the 
Founder of Nature) has denied this frigid rocky 
region the growth of trees, he has bid the 
streams of the Ocean to convey to its shores a 
great deal of wood, which accordingly comes 
floating thither, part without ice, but the most 
part along with it, and lodges itself between the 
islands. Were it not for this, we Europeans 
should have no wood to burn there, and the poor 
Greenlanders (who, it is true, do not use wood, 
but train, for burning) would, however, have no 
wood to roof their houses, to erect their tents, 
as also to build their boats, and to shaft their 
arrows, (yet there grew some small but crooked 
alders, etc.,) by which they must procure their 
maintenance, clothing and train for warmth, 
light, and cooking. Among this wood are great 
trees torn up by the roots, which, by driving up 



70 CAPE COD 

and down for many years and rubbing on the 
ice, are quite bare of branches and bark, and 
corroded with great wood-worms. A small part 
of this drift-wood are willows, alder and birch 
trees, which come out of the bays in the south 
(i. e. , of Greenland) ; also large trunks of asx>en- 
trees, which must come from a greater distance ; 
but the greatest part is pine and fir. We find 
also a good deal of a sort of wood finely veined, 
with few branches; this I fancy is larch-wood, 
which likes to decorate the sides of lofty, stony 
mountains. There is also a solid, reddish wood, 
of a more agreeable fragrance than the common 
fir, with visible cross-veins; which I take to be 
the same species as the beautiful silver-firs, or 
zirheU that have the smell of cedar, and grow on 
the high Grison hills, and the Switzers wain- 
scot their rooms with them." The wrecker di- 
rected us to a slight depression, called Snow's 
Hollow, by which we ascended the bank, — for 
elsewhere, if not difficult, it was inconvenient to 
climb it on account of the sliding sand which 
filled our shoes. 

This sand -bank — the backbone of the Cape 
— rose directly from the beach to the height of 
a hundred feet or more above the ocean. It 
was with singular emotions that we first stood 
upon it and discovered what a place we had 
chosen to walk on. On our right, beneath us, 



THE BEACH 71 

was the beach of smooth and gently- sloping 
sand, a dozen rods in width; next, the endless 
series of white breakers; further still, the light 
green water over the bar, which runs the whole 
length of the fore-arm of the Cape, and beyond 
this stretched the unwearied and illimitable 
ocean. On our left, extending back from the 
very edge of the bank, was a perfect desert of 
shining sand, from thirty to eighty rods in 
width, skirted in the distance by small sand- 
hills fifteen or twenty feet high ; between which, 
however, in some places, the sand penetrated as 
much farther. Next commenced the region of 
vegetation, — a succession of small hills and 
valleys covered with shrubbery, now glowing 
with the brightest imaginable autumnal tints; 
and beyond this were seen, here and there, the 
waters of the bay. Here, in Wellfleet, this 
pure sand plateau, known to sailors as the Table 
Lands of Eastham, on account of its appearance, 
as seen from the ocean, and because it once 
made a part of that town, — full fifty rods in 
width, and in many places much more, and 
sometimes full one hundred and fifty feet above 
the ocean, — stretched away northward from 
the southern boundary of the town, without a 
particle of vegetation, — as level almost as a 
table, — for two and a half or three miles, or 
as far as the eye could reach; slightly rising 



72 CAPE COD 

towards the ocean, then stooping to the beach, 
by as steep a slope as sand could lie on, and as 
regular as a military engineer could desire. It 
was like the escarped rampart of a stupendous 
fortress, whose glacis was the beach, and whose 
champaign the ocean. From its surface we 
overlooked the greater part of the Cape. In 
short, we were traversing a desert, with the view 
of an autumnal landscape of extraordinary bril- 
liancy, a sort of Promised Land, on the one 
hand, and the ocean on the other. Yet, though 
the prospect was so extensive, and the country 
for the most part destitute of trees, a house was 
rarely visible, — we never saw one from the 
beach, — and the solitude was that of the ocean 
and the desert combined. A thousand men could 
not have seriously interrupted it, but would have 
been lost in the vastness of the scenery as their 
footsteps in the sand. 

The whole coast is so free from rocks, that we 
saw but one or two for more than twenty miles. 
The sand was soft like the beach, and trying to 
the eyes, when the sun shone. A few piles of 
drift-wood, which some wreckers had painfully 
brought up the bank and stacked uj) there to 
dry, being the only objects in the desert, looked 
indefinitely large and distant, even like wigwams, 
though, when we stood near them, they proved 
to be insignificant little "jags " of wood. 



THE BEACH 73 

For sixteen miles, commencing at the Nauset 
Lights, the bank hehl its height, though farther 
north it was not so level as here, but interrupted 
by slight hollows, and the patches of beach- 
grass and bayberry frequently crept into the 
sand to its edge. There are some pages entitled 
"A Description of the Eastern Coast of the 
County of Barnstable," printed in 1802, point- 
ing out the spots on which the Trustees of the 
Humane Society have erected huts called Char- 
ity or Humane Houses, " and other places where 
shipwrecked seamen may look for shelter." 
Two thousand copies of this were dispersed, 
that every vessel which frequented this coast 
might be provided with one. I have read this 
Shipwrecked Seaman's Manual with a melan- 
choly kind of interest, — for the sound of the 
surf, or, you might say, the moaning of the sea, 
is heard all through it, as if its author were the 
sole survivor of a shipwreck himself. Of this 
part of the coast he says: "This highland ap- 
proaches the ocean with steep and lofty banks, 
which it is extremely difficult to climb, especially 
in a storm. In violent tempests, during very 
high tides, the sea breaks against the foot of 
them, rendering it then unsafe to walk on the 
strand which lies between them and the ocean. 
Should the seaman succeed in his attempt to 
ascend them, he must forbear to penetrate into 



74 CAPE COD 

the country, as houses are generally so remote 
that they would escape his research during the 
night ; he must pass on to the valleys by which 
the banks are intersected. These valleys, which 
the inhabitants call Hollows, run at right angles 
with the shore, and in the middle or lowest part 
of them a road leads from the dwelling-houses 
to the sea." By the word road must not always 
be understood a visible cart-track. 

There were these two roads for us, — an upper 
and a lower one, — the bank and the beach ; 
both stretching twenty -eight miles northwest, 
from Nauset Harbor to Race Point, without a 
single opening into the beach, and with hardly 
a serious interruption of the desert. If you 
were to ford the narrow and shallow inlet at 
Nauset Harbor, where there is not more than 
eight feet of water on the bar at full sea, you 
might walk ten or twelve miles farther, which 
would make a beach forty miles long, — and the 
bank and beach, on the east side of Nantucket, 
are but a continuation of these. I was com- 
paratively satisfied. There I had got the Cape 
under me, as much as if I were riding it bare- 
backed. It was not as on the map, or seen from 
the stage-coach ; but there I found it all out of 
doors, huge and real. Cape Cod! as it cannot 
be represented on a map, color it as you will ; 
the thing itself, than which there is nothing 



THE BEACH 75 

more like it, no truer picture or account ; which 
you cannot go farther and see. I cannot remem- 
ber what I thought before that it was. They 
commonly celebrate those beaches only which 
have a hotel on them, not those which have a 
humane house alone. But I wished to see that 
seashore where man's works are wrecks; to put 
up at the true Atlantic House, where the ocean 
is land-lord as well as sea-lord, and comes ashore 
without a wharf for the landing; where the 
crumbling land is the only invalid, or at best is 
but dry land, and that is all you can say of it. 
We walked on quite at our leisure, now on the 
beach, now on the bank, — sitting from time to 
time on some damp log, maple or yellow birch, 
which had long followed the seas, but had now 
at last settled on land; or under the lee of a 
sand-hill, on the bank, that we might gaze stead- 
ily on the ocean. The bank was so steep, that, 
where there was no danger of its caving, we sat 
on its edge as on a bench. It was difficult for 
us landsmen to look out over the ocean without 
imagining land in the horizon; yet the clouds 
appeared to hang low over it, and rest on the 
water as they never do on the land, perhaps on 
account of the great distance to which we saw. 
The sand was not without advantage, for, 
though it was "heavy " walking in it, it was soft 
to the feet; and, notwithstanding that it had 



76 CAPE COD 

been raining nearly two days, when it held up 
for half an hour, the sides of the sand-hills, 
which were porous and sliding, afforded a dry 
seat. All the aspects of this desert are beau- 
tiful, whether you behold it in fair weather or 
foul, or when the sun is just breaking out after 
a storm, and shining on its moist surface in the 
distance, it is so white, and pure, and level, 
and each slight inequality and track is so dis- 
tinctly revealed; and when your eyes slide off 
this, they fall on the ocean. In summer the 
mackerel gulls — which here have their nests 
among the neighboring sand-hills — pursue the 
traveler anxiously, now and then diving close to 
his head with a squeak, and he may see them, 
like swallows, chase some crow which has been 
feeding on the beach, almost across the Cape. 

Though for some time I have not spoken of 
the roaring of the breakers, and the ceaseless 
flux and reflux of the waves, yet they did not 
for a moment cease to dash and roar, with such 
a tumult that, if you had been there, you could 
scarcely have heard my voice the while; and 
they are dashing and roaring this very moment, 
though it may be with less din and violence, for 
there the sea never rests. We were wholly ab- 
sorbed by this spectacle and tumult, and like 
Chryses, though in a different mood from him, 
we walked silent along the shore of the resound- 
ing sea. 



THE BEACH 77 

B^ 5' OLKiuv iraph diva iro\v(p\oi(rPoio 6a\d(r<T7]S.^ 

I put ill a little Greek now and then, partly 
because it sounds so much like the ocean, — 
though I doubt if Homer's Mediterranean Sea 
ever sounded so loud as this. 

The attention of those who frequent the 
camp-meetings at Eastham is said to be divided 
between the preaching of the Methodists and 
the preaching of the billows on the back side of 
the Cape, for they all stream over here in the 
course of their stay. I trust that in this case 
the loudest voice carries it. With what effect 
may we suppose the ocean to say, " My hearers ! '* 
to the multitude on the bank! On that side 
some John N. Maffit; on this, the Keverend 
Poluphloisboios Thalassa. 

There was but little weed cast up here, and 
that kelp chiefly, there being scarcely a rock 
for rock-weed to adhere to. Who has not had 
a vision from some vessel's deck, when he had 
still his land legs on, of this great brown apron, 
drifting half upright, and quite submerged 
through the green water, clasping a stone or a 
deep-sea mussel in its unearthly fingers? I 
have seen it carrying a stone half as large as my 

^ We have no word in English to express the sound of many 
waves dashing at once, whether gently or violently iroAvcpXoia--' 
fioios to the ear, and, in the ocean's gentle moods, an auapid/xop 
y€\aafia to the eye. 



7^ CAPE COD 

head. We sometimes watched a mass of this 
cal>le-like weed, as it was tossed up on the crest 
of a breaker, waiting with interest to see it 
come in, as if there was some treasure buoyed 
up by it; but we were always surprised and dis- 
appointed at the insignificance of the mass 
which had attracted us. As we looked out over 
the water, the smallest objects floating on it ap- 
peared indefinitely large, we were so impressed 
by the vastness of the ocean, and each one bore 
so large a proportion to the whole ocean, which 
we saw. We were so often disappointed in the 
size of such things as came ashore, the ridiculous 
bits of wood or weed, with which the ocean la- 
bored, that we began to doubt whether the At- 
lantic itself would bear a still closer inspection, 
and would not turn out to be but a small pond, 
if it should come ashore to us. This kelp, oar- 
weed, tangle, devil's apron, sole-leather, or rib- 
bon-weed, — as various species are called, — 
appeared to us a singularly marine and fabulous 
product, a fit invention for Neptune to adorn his 
car with, or a freak of Proteus. All that is 
told of the sea has a fabulous sound to an in- 
habitant of the land, and all its products have a 
certain fabulous quality, as if they belonged to 
another planet, from seaweed to a sailor's yarn, 
or a fish story. In this element the animal and 
vegetable kingdoms meet and are strangely min- 



THE BEACH 79 

gled. One species of kelp, according to Bory 
St. Vincent, has a stem fifteen hundred feet 
long, and hence is the longest vegetable known, 
and a brig's crew spent two days to no purpose 
collecting the trunks of another kind cast ashore 
on the Falkland Islands, mistaking it for drift- 
wood.^ This species looked almost edible; at 
least, I thought that if I were starving, I would 
try it. One sailor told me that the cows ate it. 
It cut like cheese ; for I took the earliest oppor- 
tunity to sit down and deliberately whittle up a 
fathom or two of it, that I might become more 
intimately acquainted with it, see how it cut, 
and if it were hollow all the way through. The 
blade looked like a broad belt, whose edges had 
been quilled, or as if stretched by hammering, 
and it was also twisted spirally. The extremity 
was generally worn and ragged from the lashing 
of the waves. A piece of the stem which I car- 
ried home shrunk to one quarter of its size a 
week afterward, and was completely covered 
with crystals of salt like frost. The reader will 
excuse my greenness, — though it is not sea- 
greenness, like his, perchance, — for I live by a 
river shore, where this weed does not wash up. 
When we consider in what meadows it grew, 
and how it was raked, and in what kind of hay 
weather got in or out, we may well be curious 

1 See Harvey on Algm. 



80 CAPE COD 

about it. One who is weather-wise has given 
the following account of the matter ; — 

" When descends on the Atlantic 

The gigantic 
Storm-wind of the equinox, 
Landward in his wrath he scourges 

The toiling surges, 
Laden with sea-weed from the rocks. 

*' From Bermuda's reefs, from edges 
Of sunken ledges, 
In some far-off bright Azore ; 
From Bahama and the dashing, 

Silver-flashing 
Surges of San Salvador : 

*' From the tumbling surf that buries 

The Orkneyan Skerries, 
Answering the hoarse Hebrides ; 
And from wrecks of ships and drifting 

Spars, uplifting 
On the desolate rainy seas ; 

" Ever drifting, drifting, drifting 
On the shifting 
Currents of the restless main." 

But he was not thinking of this shore, when he 
added, — 

" Till, in sheltered coves and reaches 
Of sandy beaches. 
All have found repose again. " 

These weeds were the symbols of those gro- 
tesque and fabulous thoughts which have not 
yet got into the sheltered coves of literature. 



THE BEACH 81 

" Ever drifting, drifting-, drifting 

On the shifting 
Currents of the restless heart; " 
And not yet " in books recorded 

They, like hoarded 
Household words, no more depart." 

The beach was also strewn with beautiful sea* 
jellies, which the wreckers called Sun-squall, 
one of the lowest forms of animal life, some 
white, some wine-colored, and a foot in diameter. 
I at first thought that they were a tender part 
of some marine monster, which the storm or 
some other foe had mangled. What right has 
the sea to bear in its bosom such tender things 
as sea-jellies and mosses, when it has such a 
boisterous shore, that the stoutest fabrics are 
wrecked against it? Strange that it should un- 
dertake to dandle such delicate children in its 
arm. I did not at first recognize these for the 
same which I had formerly seen in myriads in 
Boston Harbor, rising, with a waving motion, 
to the surface, as if to meet the sun, and dis- 
coloring the waters far and wide, so that I 
seemed to be sailing through a mere sun-fish 
soup. They say that when you endeavor to take 
one up, it will spill out the other side of your 
hand like quicksilver. Before the land rose out 
of the ocean, and became dry land, chaos 
reigned ; and between high and low water mark, 
where she is partially disrobed and rising, a sort 



82 CAPE COD 

of cliaos reigns still, which only anomalous 
creatures can inhabit. Mackerel-gulls were all 
the while flying over our heads and amid the 
breakers, sometimes two white ones pursuing a 
black one; quite at home in the storm, though 
they are as delicate organizations as sea-jellies 
and mosses ; and we saw that they were adapted 
to their circumstances rather by their spirits 
than their bodies. Theirs must be an essen- 
tially wilder, that is less human, nature, than 
that of larks and robins. Their note was like 
the sound of some vibrating metal, and harmon- 
ized well with the scenery and the roar of the 
surf, as if one had rudely touched the strings of 
the lyre, which ever lies on the shore ; a ragged 
shred of ocean music tossed aloft on the spray. 
But if I were required to name a sound, the re- 
membrance of which most perfectly revives the 
impression which the beach has made, it would 
be the dreary peep of the piping plover ( Cha- 
radrlus melodus) which haunts there. Their 
voices, too, are heard as a fugacious part in the 
dirge which is ever played along the shore for 
those mariners who have been lost in the deep 
since first it was created. But through all this 
dreariness we seemed to have a pure and un- 
qualified strain of eternal melody, for always 
the same strain which is a dirge to one household 
is a morning song of rejoicing to another. 



THE BEACH 83 

A remarkable method of catching gulls, de- 
icived from the Indians, was practiced in Well- 
fleet in 1794. "The Gull House," it is said, 
" is built with crotches, fixed in the ground on 
the beach," poles being stretched across for the 
top, and the sides made close with stakes and sea- 
weed. " The poles on the top [are] covered with 
lean whale. The man, being placed within, is 
not discovered by the fowls, and, while they are 
contending for and eating the flesh, he draws 
them in, one by one, between the poles, until he 
has collected forty or fifty." Hence, perchance, 
a man is said to be gulled^ when he is tahen in. 
We read that one "sort of gulls is called by the 
Dutch mallemuche^ i. e. , the foolish fly, because 
they fall upon a whale as eagerly as a fly, and, 
indeed, all gulls are foolishly bold and easy to 
be shot. The Norwegians call this bird havJiest, 
sea-horse (and the English translator says, it is 
probably what we call boobies). If they have 
eaten too much, they throw it up, and eat it 
again till they are tired. It is this habit in the 
gulls of parting with their property [disgorging 
the contents of their stomachs to the skuas], 
which has given rise to the terms gull, guller, 
and gulling, among men." We also read that 
they used to kill small birds which roosted on 
the beach at night, by making a fire with hog's 
lard in a frying-pan. The Indians probably 



84 CAPE COD 

used pine torches; the birds flocked to the 
light, and were knocked down with a stick. 
We noticed holes dug near the edge of the bank, 
where gunners conceal themselves to shoot the 
large gulls which coast up and down a-fishing, 
for these are considered good to eat. 

We found some large clams, of the species 
Mactra solidissima, which the storm had torn 
up from the bottom, and cast ashore. I selected 
one of the largest, about six inches in length, 
and carried it along, thinking to try an experi' 
ment on it. We soon after met a wrecker, 
with a grapple and a rope, who said that he was 
looking for tow cloth, which had made part of 
the cargo of the ship Franklin, which was 
wrecked here in the spring, at which time nine 
or ten lives were lost. The reader may remem- 
ber this wreck, from the circumstance that a 
letter was found in the captain's valise, which 
washed ashore, directing him to wreck the vessel 
before he got to America, and from the trial 
which took place in consequence. The wrecker 
said that tow cloth was still cast up in such 
storms as this. He also told us that the clam 
which I had was the sea-clam, or hen, and was 
good to eat. We took our nooning under a 
sand-hill, covered with beach-grass, in a dreary 
little hollow, on the top of the bank, while it 
alternately rained and shined. There, having 



THE BEACH 85 

reduced some damp drift-wood, which I had 
picked up on the shore, to shavings with my 
knife, I kindled a fire with a match and some 
paper, and cooked my clam on the embers for 
my dinner; for breakfast was commonly the 
only meal which I took in a house on this excur- 
sion. When the clam was done, one valve held 
the meat, and the other the liquor. Though it 
was very tough, I found it sweet and savory, and 
ate the loliole with a relish. Indeed, with the 
addition of a cracker or two, it would have been 
a bountiful dinner. I noticed that the shells 
were such as I had seen in the sugar-kit at 
home. Tied to a stick, they formerly made the 
Indian's hoe hereabouts. 

At length, by mid-afternoon, after we had 
had two or three rainbows over the sea, the 
showers ceased, and the heavens gradually 
cleared up, though the wind still blowed as hard 
and the breakers ran as high as before. Keep- 
ing on, we soon after came to a Charity-house, 
which we looked into to see how the shipwrecked 
mariner might fare. Far away in some desolate 
hollow by the sea-side, just within the bank, 
stands a lonely building on piles driven into the 
sand, with a slight nail put through the staple, 
which a freezing man can bend, with some 
straw, perchance, on the floor on which he may 
lie, or which he may burn in the fire-place to 



86 CAPE COD 

keep him alive. Perhaps this hut has never 
been required to shelter a shipwrecked man, 
and the benevolent person who promised to in- 
spect it annually, to see that the straw and 
matches are here, and that the boards will keep 
off the wind, has grown remiss and thinks that 
storms and shipwrecks are over; and this very 
night a perishing crew may pry open its door 
with their numbed fingers and leave half their 
number dead here by morning. When I 
thought what must be the condition of the fami- 
lies which alone would ever occupy or had oc- 
cupied them, what must have been the tragedy 
of the winter evenings spent by human beings 
around their hearths, these houses, though they 
were meant for human dwellings, did not look 
cheerful to me. They appeared but a stage to 
the grave. The gulls flew around and screamed 
over them ; the roar of the ocean in storms, and 
the lapse of its waves in calms, alone resounds 
through them, all dark and empty within, year 
in, year out, except, perchance, on one memor- 
able night. Houses of entertainment for ship- 
wrecked men! What kind of sailor's homes 
were they? 

"Each hut," says the author of the "Descrip- 
tion of the Eastern Coast of the County of 
Barnstable," "stands on piles, is eight feet long, 
eight feet wide, and seven feet high; a sliding 



THE BEACH 87 

door is on the south, a sliding shutter on the 
west, and a pole, rising fifteen feet above the 
top of the building, on the east. Within it is 
supplied either with straw or hay, and is further 
accommodated with a bench." They have va- 
ried little from this model now. There are 
similar huts at the Isle of Sable and Anticosti, 
on the north, and how far south along the coast 
I know not. It is pathetic to read the minute 
and faithful directions which he gives to seamen 
who may be wrecked on this coast, to guide 
them to the nearest Charity -house, or other 
shelter, for, as is said of Eastham, though there 
are a few houses within a mile of the shore, yet 
"in a snow-storm, which rages here with exces- 
sive fury, it would be almost impossible to dis- 
cover them either by night or by day." You 
hear their imaginary guide thus marshalling, 
cheering, directing the dripping, shivering, 
freezing troop along : " At the entrance of this 
valley the sand has gathered, so that at present 
a little climbing is necessary. Passing over 
several fences and taking heed not to enter the 
wood on the right hand, at the distance of three 
quarters of a mile a house is to be found. This 
house stands on the south side of the road, and 
not far from it on the south is Pamet River, 
which runs from east to west through a body of 
salt marsh." To him cast ashore in Eastham, 



88 CAPE COD 

he says, " The meeting-house is without a steeple, 
but it may be distinguished from the dwelling- 
houses near it by its situation, which is between 
two small groves of locusts, one on the south and 
one on the north, — that on the south being 
three times as long as the other. About a mile 
and a quarter from the hut, west by north, ap- 
pear the top and arms of a windmill." And so 
on for many pages. 

We did not learn whether these houses had 
been the means of saving any lives, though this 
writer says, of one erected at the head of Stout's 
Creek, in Truro, that "it was built in an im- 
proper manner, having a chimney in it; and 
was placed on a spot where no beach-grass grew. 
The strong winds blew the sand from its foun- 
dation, and the weight of the chimney brought 
it to the ground ; so that in January of the pres- 
ent year [1802] it was entirely demolished. 
This event took place about six weeks before 
the Brutus was cast away. If it had remained, 
it is probable that the whole of the unfortunate 
crew of that ship would have been saved, as 
they gained the shore a few rods only from the 
spot where the hut had stood." 

This "Charity-house," as the wrecker called 
it, this "Humane house," as some call it, that 
is, the one to which we first came, had neither 
window nor sliding shutter, nor clapboards, nor 



THE BEACH 89 

paint. As we have said, there was a rusty nail 
put through the staple. However, as we wished 
to get an idea of a Humane house, and we 
hoped that we should never have a better oppor- 
tunity, we put our eyes, by turns, to a knot- 
hole in the door, and, after long looking, with- 
out seeing, into the dark, — not knowing how 
many shipwrecked men's bones we might see at 
last, looking with the eye of faith, knowing 
that, though to him that knocketh it may not 
always be opened, yet to him that looketh long 
enough through a knot-hole the inside shall be 
visible, — for we had had some practice at look- 
ing inward, — by steadily keeping our other ball 
covered from the light meanwhile, putting the 
outward world behind us, ocean and land, and 
the beach, — till the pupil became enlarged and 
collected the rays of light that were wandering 
in that dark (for the pupil shall be enlarged by 
looking ; there never was so dark a night but a 
faithful and patient eye, however small, might 
at last prevail over it), — after all this, I say, 
things began to take shape to our vision, — if 
we may use this expression where there was no- 
thing but emptiness, -— and we obtained the 
long-wished-for insight. Though we thought at 
first that it was a hopeless case, after several 
minutes' steady exercise of the divine faculty, 
our prospects began decidedly to brighten, and 



90 CAPE COD 

we were ready to exclaim with the blind bard of 
"Paradise Lost and Regained," — 

" Hail, holy Light ! ofPspring- of Heaven first bom, 
Or of the Eternal co-eternal beam 
May I express thee unblamed ? " 

A little longer, and a chimney rushed red on 
our sight. In short, when our vision had grown 
familiar with the darkness, we discovered that 
there were some stones and some loose wads of 
wool on the floor, and an empty fire-place at the 
further end; but it was not supplied with 
matches, or straw, or hay, that we could see, 
nor "accommodated with a bench." Indeed, it 
was the wreck of all cosmical beauty there 
within. 

Turning our backs on the outward world, we 
thus looked through the knot-hole into the Hu- 
mane house, into the very bowels of mercy ; and 
for bread we found a stone. It was literally a 
great cry (of sea-mews outside), and a little 
wool. However, we were glad to sit outside, 
under the lee of the Humane house, to escape 
the piercing wind; and there we thought how 
cold is charity ! how inhumane humanity ! This, 
then, is what charity hides! Virtues antique 
and far away, with ever a rusty nail over the 
latch; and very difficult to keep in repair, 
withal, it is so uncertain whether any will ever 
gain the beach near you. So we shivered round 



THE BEACH 91 

about, not being able- to get into it, ever and 
anon looking through the knot-hole into that 
night without a star, until we concluded that it 
was not a humane house at all, but a seaside 
box, now shut up, belonging to some of the 
family of Night or Chaos, where they spent their 
summers by the sea, for the sake of the sea- 
breeze, and that it was not proper for us to be 
prying into their concerns. 

My companion had declared before this that I 
had not a particle of sentiment, in rather abso- 
lute terms, to my astonishment; but I suspect 
he meant that my legs did not ache just then, 
though I am not wholly a stranger to that senti- 
ment. But I did not intend this for a senti- 
mental journey. 



THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 

Having walked about eight miles since we 
struck the beach, and passed the boundary be- 
tween Wellfleet and Truro, a stone post in the 
sand, — for even this sand comes under the ju- 
risdiction of one town or another, — we turned 
inland over barren hills and valleys, whither the 
sea, for some reason, did not follow us, and, 
tracing up a Hollow, discovered two or three 
sober-looking houses within half a mile, uncom- 
monly near the eastern coast. Their garrets 
were apparently so full of chambers, that their 
roofs could hardly lie down straight, and we did 
not doubt that there was room for us there. 
Houses near the sea are generally low and broad. 
These were a story and a half high ; but if you 
merely counted the windows in their gable ends, 
you would think that there were many stories 
more, or, at any rate, that the haK-story was the 
only one thought worthy of being illustrated. 
The great number of windows in the ends of the 
houses, and their irregularity in size and posi- 
tion, here and elsewhere on the Cape, struck us 



THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 93 

agreeably, — as if each of the various occupants 
who had their cunahida behind had punched a 
hole where his necessities required it, and ac- 
cording to his size and stature, without regard 
to outside effect. There were windows for the 
grown folks, and windows for the children, — 
three or four apiece; as a certain man had a 
large hole cut in his barn-door for the cat, and 
another smaller one for the kitten. Sometimes 
they were so low under the eaves that I thought 
they must have perforated the plate beam for an- 
other apartment, and I noticed some which were 
triangular, to fit that part more exactly. The 
ends of the houses had thus as many muzzles as 
a revolver, and, if the inhabitants have the same 
habit of staring out the windows that some of 
our neighbors have, a traveler must stand a 
small chance with them. 

Generally, the old-fashioned and unpainted 
houses on the Cape looked more comfortable, as 
well as picturesque, than the modern and more 
pretending ones, which were less in harmony 
with the scenery, and less firmly planted. 

These houses were on the shores of a chain of 
ponds, seven in number, the source of a small 
stream called Herring River, which empties 
into the Bay. There are many Herring Rivers 
on the Cape ; they will, perhaps, be more numer- 
ous than herrings soon. We knccked at the 



94 CAPE COD 

door of the first house, but its inhabitants were 
all gone away. In the mean while, we saw the 
occupants of the next one looking out the win- 
dow at us, and before we reached it an old 
woman came out and fastened the door of her 
bulkhead, and went in again. Nevertheless, 
we did not hesitate to knock at her door, when a 
grizzly - looking man appeared, whom we took 
to be sixty or seventy years old. He asked us, 
at first, suspiciously, where we were from, and 
what our business was; to which we returned 
plain answers. 

"How far is Concord from Boston?" he in- 
quired. 

"Twenty miles by railroad." 

"Twenty miles by railroad," he repeated. 

"Didn't you ever hear of Concord of Revo- 
lutionary fame? " 

"Did n't I ever hear of Concord? Why, I 
heard guns fire at the battle of Bunker Hill. 
[They hear the sound of heavy cannon across the 
Bay.] I am almost ninety; I am eighty-eight 
year old. I was fourteen year old at the time 
of Concord Fight, — and where were you 
then?" 

We were obliged to confess that we were not 
in the fight. 

"Well, walk in, we '11 leave it to the women," 
said he. 




rX 



O 






THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 95 

So we walked in, surprised, and sat down, an 
old woman taking our hats and bundles, and the 
old man continued, drawing up to the large, 
old-fashioned fire-place, — 

"I am a poor, good-for-nothing crittur, as 
Isaiah says ; I am all broken down this year. I 
am under petticoat government here." 

The family consisted of the old man, his wife, 
and his daughter, who appeared nearly as old as 
her mother, a fool, her son (a brutish-looking, 
middle-aged man, with a prominent lower face, 
who was standing by the hearth when we en- 
tered, but immediately went out), and a little 
boy of ten. 

While my companion talked with the women, 
I talked with the old man. They said that he 
was old and foolish, but he was evidently too 
knowing for them. 

"These women," said he to me, "are both of 
them poor good-for-nothing crittur s. This one 
is my wife. I married her sixty-four years ago. 
She is eighty-four years old, and as deaf as an 
adder, and the other is not much better." 

He thought well of the Bible, or at least he 
spohe well, and did not think ill, of it, for that 
would not have been prudent for a man of his 
age. He said that he had read it attentively for 
many years, and he had much of it at his 
tongue's end. He seemed deeply impressed 



96 CAPE COD 

with a sense of his own nothingness, and would 
repeatedly exclaim, — 

"I am a nothing. What I gather from my 
Bible is just this; that man is a poor good-for- 
nothing crittur, and everything is just as God 
sees fit and disposes." 

"May I ask your name?" I said. 

"Yes," he answered, "I am not ashamed to 
tell my name. My name is . My great- 
grandfather came over from England and settled 
here." 

He was an old Wellfleet oysterman, who had 
acquired a competency in that business, and had 
sons still engaged in it. 

Nearly all the oyster shops and stands in 
Massachusetts, I am told, are supplied and kept 
by natives of Wellfleet, and a part of this town 
is still called Billingsgate from the oysters hav- 
ing been formerly planted there ; but the native 
oysters are said to have died in 1770. Various 
causes are assigned for this, such as a ground 
frost, the carcasses of black-fish, kept to rot in 
the harbor, and the like, but the most common 
account of the matter is, — and I find that a 
similar superstition with regard to the disap- 
pearance of fishes exists almost everywhere, — 
that when Wellfleet began to quarrel with the 
neighboring towns about the right to gather 
them, yellow specks appeared in them, and 



THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 97 

Providence caused them to disappear. A few 
years ago sixty thousand bushels were annually 
brought from the South and planted in the har- 
bor of Wellfleet till they attained "the proper 
relish of Billingsgate;" but now they are im- 
ported commonly full-grown, and laid down 
near their markets, at Boston and elsewhere, 
where the water, being a mixture of salt and 
fresh, suits them better. The business was said 
to be still good and improving. 

The old man said that the oysters were liable 
to freeze in the winter, if planted too high ; but 
if it were not "so cold as to strain their eyes" 
they were not injured. The inhabitants of New 
Brunswick have noticed that " ice will not form 
over an oyster-bed, unless the cold is very in- 
tense indeed, and when the bays are frozen over 
the oyster-beds are easily discovered by the 
water above them remaining unfrozen, or as the 
French residents say, degele.^^ Our host said 
that they kept them in cellars all winter. 

"Without anything to eat or drink?" I 
asked. 

"Without anything to eat or drink," he an- 
swered. 

"Can the oysters move? " 

"Just as much as my shoe." 

But when I caught him saying that they 
"bedded themselves dpwn in the sand, flat side 



98 CAPE COD 

up, round side down," I told him that my shoe 
could not do that, without the aid of my foot in 
it; at which he said that they merely settled 
down as they grew; if put down in a square 
they would be found so; but the clam could 
move quite fast. I have since been told by 
oystermen of Long Island, where the oyster is 
still indigenous and abundant, that they are 
found in large masses attached to the parent in 
their midst, and are so taken up with their 
tongs; in which case, they say, the age of the 
young proves that there could have been no mo- 
tion for five or six years at least. And Buck- 
land in his Curiosities of Natural History (page 
60) says: "An oyster, who has once taken up 
his position and fixed himself when quite young, 
can never make a change. Oysters, neverthe- 
less, that have not fixed themselves, but remain 
loose at the bottom of the sea, have the power 
of locomotion; they open their shells to their 
fullest extent, and then suddenly contracting 
them, the expulsion of the water forwards gives 
a motion backwards. A fisherman at Guernsey 
told me that he had frequently seen oysters mov- 
ing in this way." 

Some still entertain the question "whether 
the oyster was indigenous in Massachusetts 
Bay," and whether Wellfleet harbor was a 
"natural habitat" of this fish; but, to say no- 



THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 99 

thing of the testimony of old oystermen, which, 
I think, is quite conclusive, though the native 
oyster may now be extinct there, I saw that 
their shells, opened by the Indians, were strewn 
all over the Cape. Indeed, the Cape was at 
first thickly settled by Indians on account of 
the abundance of these and other fish. We saw 
many traces of their occupancy after this, in 
Truro, near Great Hollow, and at High-Head, 
near East Harbor River, — oysters, clams, 
cockles, and other shells, mingled with ashes 
and the bones of deer and other quadrupeds. I 
picked up half a dozen arrow-heads, and in an 
hour or two could have filled my pockets with 
them. The Indians lived about the edges of the 
swamps, then probably in some instances ponds, 
for shelter and water. Moreover, Champlain, 
in the edition of his "Voyages " printed in 1613, 
says that in the year 1606 he and Poitrincourt 
exj)lored a harbor (Barnstable Harbor?) in the 
southerly part of what is now called Massachu- 
setts Bay, in latitude 42°, about five leagues 
south, one point west of Cap Blanc (Cape 
Cod), and there they found many good oysters, 
and they named it "Ze Port aux Huistres^'^ 
[sic] (Oyster Harbor). In one edition of his 
map (1632), the "i?. aux Escailles^'' is drawn 
emptying into the same part of the bay, and on 
the map ''^ovi Belgii,^^ in Ogilby's America 



100 CAPE COD 

(1670), the words '^ Port aux Huistres^^ are 
placed against the same place. Also William 
Wood, who left New England in 1633, speaks, 
in his "New England's Prospect," published in 
1634, of "a great oyster-bank" in Charles 
River, and of another in the Mistick, each of 
i^hich obstructed the navigation of its river. 
^The oysters," says he, "be great ones in form 
of a shoe-horn; some be a foot long; these 
breed on certain banks that are bare every 
spring tide. This fish without the shell is so 
big, that it must admit of a division before you 
can well get it into your mouth." Oysters are 
still found there. ^ 

Our host told us that the sea-clam, or hen, 
was not easily obtained; it was raked up, but 
never on the Atlantic side, only cast ashore 
there in small quantities in storms. The fisher- 
man sometimes wades in water several feet deep, 
and thrusts a pointed stick into the sand before 
him. When this enters between the valves of a 
clam, he closes them on it, and is drawn out. 
It has been known to catch and hold coot and 
teal which were preying on it. I chanced to be 
on the bank of the Acushnet at New Bedford one 
day since this, watching some ducks, when a 
man informed me that, having let out his young 
ducks to seek their food amid the samphire 
1 Also, see Thomas Morton's New English Canaan^ p. 90. 



THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 101 

{Salicornia) and other weeds along the river- 
side at low tide that morning, at length he no- 
ticed that one remained stationary, amid the 
weeds, something preventing it from following 
the others, and going to it he found its foot 
tightly shut in a quahog's shell. He took up 
both together, carried them to his home, and 
his wife opening the shell with a knife released 
the duck and cooked the quahog. The old man 
said that the great clams were good to eat, but 
that they always took out a certain part which 
was poisonous, before they cooked them. 
"People said it would kill a cat." I did not 
tell him that I had eaten a large one entire that 
afternoon, but began to think that I was tougher 
than a cat. He stated that pedlers came round 
there, and sometimes tried to sell the women 
folks a skimmer, but he told them that their 
women had got a better skimmer than they 
could make, in the shell of their clams ; it was 
shaped just right for this purpose. — They caU 
them "skim-alls " in some places. He also said 
that the sun-squall was poisonous to handle, 
and when the sailors came across it, they did 
not meddle with it, but heaved it out of their 
way. I told him that I had handled it that 
afternoon, and had felt no ill effects as yet. 
But he said it made the hands itch, especially if 
they had previously been scratched, or if I put 



102 CAPE COD 

it into my bosom, I should find out what it 
was. 

He informed us that no ice ever formed on 
the back side of the Cape, or not more than 
once in a century, and but little snow lay there, 
it being either absorbed or blown or washed 
away. Sometimes in winter, when the tide was 
down, the beach was frozen, and afforded a hard 
road up the back side for some thirty miles, as 
smooth as a floor. One winter when he was a 
boy, he and his fatlier "took right out into the 
back side before daylight, and walked to Prov- 
incetown and back to dinner." 

When I asked what they did with all that 
barren-looking land, where I saw so few culti- 
vated fields, — "Nothing," he said. 

"Then why fence your fields? " 

*' To keep the sand from blowing and cover- 
ing up the whole." 

"The yellow sand," said he, "has some life 
in it, but the white little or none." 

When, in answer to his questions, I told him 
that I was a surveyor, he said that they who 
surveyed his farm were accustomed, where the 
ground was uneven, to loop up each chain as 
high as their elbows; that was the allowance 
they made, and he wished to know if I could 
tell him why they did not come out according to 
his deed, or twice alike. He seemed to have 



THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 103 

more respect for surveyors of the old school, 
which I did not wonder at. ''King George the 
Third," said he, "laid out a road four rods wide 
and straight the whole length of the Cape," but 
where it was now he could not tell. 

This story of the surveyors reminded me of a 
Long-Islander, who once, when I had made 
ready to jump from the bow of his boat to the 
shore, and he thought that I underrated the dis- 
tance and would fall short, — though I found 
afterward that he judged of the elasticity of my 
joints by his own, — told me that when he came 
to a brook which he wanted to get over, he held 
up one leg, and then, if his foot appeared to 
cover any part of the opposite bank, he knew 
that he could jump it. "Why," I told him, 
"to say nothing of the Mississippi, and other 
small watery streams, I could blot out a star 
with my foot, but I would not engage to jump 
that distance," and asked how he knew when he 
had got his leg at the right elevation. But he 
regarded his legs as no less accurate than a pair 
of screw dividers or an ordinary quadrant, and 
appeared to have a painful recollection of every 
degree and minute in the arc which they de- 
scribed ; and he would have had me believe that 
there was a kind of hitch in his hip-joint which 
answered the purpose. I suggested that he 
should connect his two ankles by a string of the 



104 CAPE COD 

proper length, wliicli should be the chord of an 
arc, measuring his jumping ability on horizontal 
surfaces, — assuming one leg to be a perpendic- 
ular to the plane of the horizon, which, how- 
ever, may have been too bold an assumption in 
this case. Nevertheless, this was a kind of 
geometry in the legs which it interested me to 
hear of. 

Our host took pleasure in telling us the names 
of the ponds, most of which we could see from 
his windows, and making us repeat them after 
him, to see if we had got them right. They 
were Gull Pond, the largest and a very hand- 
some one, clear and deep, and more than a mile 
in circumference, Newcomb's, Swett's, Slough, 
Horse-Leech, Round, and Herring Ponds, all 
connected at high water, if I do not mistake. 
The coast-surveyors had come to him for their 
names, and he told them of one which they had 
not detected. He said that they were not so 
high as formerly. There was an earthquake 
about four years before he was born, which 
cracked the pans of the ponds, which were of 
iron, and caused them to settle. I did not re- 
member to have read of this. Innumerable 
gulls used to resort to them ; but the large gulls 
were now very scarce, for, as he said, the Eng- 
lish robbed their nests far in the north, where 
they breed. He remembered well when gulls 



THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 105 

were taken in the gull-house, and when small 
birds were killed by means of a frying-pan and 
fire at night. His father once lost a valuable 
horse from this cause. A party from Wellfleet 
having lighted their fire for this purpose, one 
dark night, on Billingsgate Island, twenty horses 
which were pastured there, and this colt among 
them, being frightened by it, and endeavoring 
in the dark to cross the passage which separated 
them from the neighboring beach, and which 
was then fordable at low tide, were all swept out 
to sea and drowned. I observed that many 
horses were still turned out to pasture all sum- 
mer on the islands and beaches in Wellfleet, 
Eastham, and Orleans, as a kind of common. 
He also described the killing of what he called 
"wild hens," here, after they had gone to roost 
in the woods, when he was a boy. Perhaps they 
were " prairie hens " (pinnated grouse). 

He liked the beach-pea {Lathyrus maritimus), 
cooked green, as well as the cultivated. He 
had seen it growing very abundantly in New- 
foundland, where also the inhabitants ate them, 
but he had never been able to obtain any ripe 
for seed. We read, under the head of Chatham, 
that "in 1555, during a time of great scarcity, 
the people about Orford, in Sussex (England) 
were preserved from perishing by eating the 
seeds of this plant, which grew there in great 



106 CAPE COD 

abundance upon the sea coast. Cows, horses, 
sheep, and goats eat it." But the writer who 
quoted this could not learn that they had ever 
been used in Barnstable County. 

He had been a voyager, then? Oh, he had 
been about the world in his day. He once con- 
sidered himself a pilot for all our coast; but 
now they had changed the names so he might be 
bothered. 

He gave us to taste what he called the Sum- 
mer Sweeting, a pleasant apple which he raised, 
and frequently grafted from, but had never seen 
growing elsewhere, except once, — three trees 
on Newfoundland, or at the Bay of Chaleur, I 
forget which, as he was sailing by. He was 
sure that he could tell the tree at a distance. 

At length the fool, whom my companion 
called the wizard, came in, muttering between 
his teeth, " Damn book-pedlers, — all the time 
talking about books. Better do something. 
Damn 'em. I '11 shoot 'em. Got a doctor 
down here. Damn him, I '11 get a gun and 
shoot him;" never once holding up his head. 
Whereat the old man stood up and said in a 
loud voice, as if he was accustomed to command, 
and this was not the first time he had been 
obliged to exert his authority there: "John, go 
sit down, mind your business, — we 've heard 
you talk before, — precious little you '11 do, — 



THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 107 

your bark is worse than ypur bite." But, with- 
out minding, John muttered the same gibberish 
over again, and then sat down at the table 
which the okl folks had left. He. ate all there 
was on it, and then turned to the apples, which 
his aged mother was paring, that she might 
give her guests some apple-sauce for breakfast, 
but she drew them away and sent him off. 

When I approached this house the next sum- 
mer, over the desolate hills between it and the 
shore, which are worthy to have been the birth- 
place of Ossian, I saw the wizard in the midst 
of a cornfield on the hillside, but, as usual, he 
loomed so strangely, that I mistook him for a 
scarecrow. 

This was the merriest old man that we had 
ever seen, and one of the best preserved. His 
style of conversation was coarse and plain 
enough to have suited Rabelais. He would 
have made a good Panurge. Or rather he was 
a sober Silenus, and we were the boys Chromis 
and Mnasilus, who listened to his story. 

" Not by Haemonian hills the Thracian bard, 
Nor awful Phoebus was on Pindus heard 
With deeper silence or with more regard." 

There was a strange mingling of past and 
present in his conversation, for he had lived 
under King George, and might have remem- 
bered when Napoleon and the moderns generally 



108 CAPE COD 

were born. He said ^that one day, when the 
troubles between the Colonies and the mother 
country first broke out, as he, a boy of fifteen, 
was pitching hay out of a cart, one Donne, an 
old Tory, who was talking with his father, a 
good Whig, said to him, "Why, Uncle Bill, 
you might as well undertake to pitch that pond 
into the ocean with a pitchfork, as for the Col- 
onies to undertake to gain their independence." 
He remembered well General Washington, and 
how he rode his horse along the streets of Bos- 
ton, and he stood up to show us how he looked. 

"He was a r — a — ther large and portly- 
looking man, a manly and resolute-looking offi- 
cer, with a pretty good leg as he sat on his 
horse." — "There, I'll tell you, this was the 
way with Washington." Then he jumped up 
again, and bowed gracefully to right and left, 
making show as if he were waving his hat. 
Said he, " That was Washington." 

He told us many anecdotes of the Revolution, 
and was much pleased when we told him that we 
had read the same in history, and that his ac- 
count agreed with the written. 

"Oh," he said, "I know, I know! I was a 
young fellow of sixteen, with my ears wide 
open; and a fellow of that age, you know, is 
pretty wide awake, and likes to know everything 
that 's going on. Oh, I know I " 



THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 109 

He told us the story of the wreck of the 
Franklin, which took place there the previous 
spring; how a boy came to his house early in 
the morning to know whose boat that was by 
the shore, for there was a vessel in distress, and 
he, being an old man, first ate his breakfast, 
and then walked over to the top of the hill by 
the shore, and sat down there, having found a 
comfortable seat, to see the ship wrecked. She 
was on the bar, only a quarter of a mile from 
him, and still nearer to the men on the beach, 
who had got a boat ready, but could render no 
assistance on account of the breakers, for there 
was a pretty high sea running. There were the 
passengers all crowded together in the forward 
part of the ship, and some were getting out of 
the cabin windows and were drawn on deck by 
the others. 

"I saw the captain get out his boat, "said he; 
"he had one little one; and then they jump^ 
into it one after another, down as straight as an 
arrow. I counted them. There were nine. 
One was a woman, and she jumped as straight 
as any of them. Then they shoved off. The 
sea took them back, one wave went over them, 
and when they came up there were six still 
clinging to the boat; I counted them. The 
next wave turned the boat bottom upward, and 
emptied them all out. None of them ever came 



110 CAPE COD 

ashore alive. There were the rest of them all 
crowded together on the forecastle, the other 
parts of the ship being under water. They had 
seen all that happened to the boat. At length a 
heavy sea separated the forecastle from the rest 
of the wreck, and set it inside of the worst 
breaker, and the boat was able to reach them, 
and it saved all that were left, but one woman." 

He also told us of the steamer Cambria's get- 
ting aground on this shore a few months before 
we were there, and of her English passengers 
who roamed over his grounds, and who, he said, 
thought the prospect from the high hill by the 
shore, "the most delightsome they had ever 
seen," and also of the pranks which the ladies 
played with his scoop-net in the ponds. He 
spoke of these travelers with their purses full 
of guineas, just as our provincial fathers used 
to speak of British bloods in the time of King 
Gfeorge the Third. 

Quid loquar f Why repeat what he told us ? 

" Aut Seyllam Nisi, quam fama secuta est, 
Candida succinctam latrantibus inguina monstris, 
Dulichias vexasse rates, et gnrgite in alto 
Ah ! timidos nautas eanibus lacerasse marinis ? " 

In the course of the evening I began to feel 
the potency of the clam which I had eaten, and 
I was obliged to confess to our host that I was 
no tougher than the cat he told of; but he 



THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 111 

answered, that he was a plain-spoken man, and 
he could tell me that it was all imagination. 
At any rate, it proved an emetic in my case, 
and I was made quite sick by it for a short time, 
wliile he laughed at my expense. I was pleased 
to read afterward, in Mourt's Relation of the 
landing of the Pilgrims in Provincetown Har- 
bor, these words: "We found great muscles 
(the old editor says that they were undoubtedly 
sea-clams) and very fat and full of sea-pearl; 
but we could not eat them, for they made us all 
sick that did eat, as well sailors as passengers, 
. . . but they were soon well again." It 
brought me nearer to the Pilgrims to be thus 
reminded by a similar experience that I was so 
like them. Moreover, it was a valuable con- 
firmation of their story, and I am prepared now 
to believe every word of Mourt's Relation. I 
was also pleased to find that man and the clam 
lay still at the same angle to one another. But 
I did not notice sea-pearl. Like Cleopatra, I 
must have swallowed it. I have since dug these 
clams on a flat in the Bay and observed them. 
They could squirt full ten feet before the wind, 
as appeared by the marks of the drops on the 
sand. 

"Now I am going to ask you a question," said 
the old man, "and I don't know as you can tell 
me; but you are a learned man, and I never 



112 CAPE COD 

had any learning, only what I got by natur." 
— It was in vain that we reminded him that he 
could quote Josephus to our confusion. — "I 've 
thought, if I ever met a learned man I should 
like to ask him this question. Can you tell me 
how Axy is spelt, and what it means? Axy^^"* 
says he; "there 's a girl over here is named 
Axy. Now what is it? What does it mean? 
Is it Scripture ? I 've read my Bible twenty-five 
years over and over, and I never came across 
it." 

"Did you read it twenty -five years for this 
object? " I asked. 

"WeU, how is it spelt? Wife, how is it 
spelt?" 

She said, "It is in the Bible; I 've seen it." 

"Well, how do you spell it? " 

"I don't know. A c h, ach, s e h, seh, — 
Achseh." 

" Does that spell Axy ? Well, do you know 
what it means? " asked he, turning to me. 

"No," I replied, "I never heard the sound 
before." 

" There was a schoolmaster down here once, 
and they asked him what it meant, and he said 
it had no more meaning than a bean-pole." 

I told him that I held the same opinion with 
the schoolmaster. I had been a schoolmaster 
myself, and had had strange names to deal with. 



THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 113 

I also heard of such names as Zoheth, Beriah, 
Amaziah, Bethuel, and Shearjashub, here- 
abouts. 

At length the little boy, who had a seat quite 
in the chimney-corner, took off his stockings 
and shoes, warmed his feet, and having had his 
sore leg freshly salved, went off to bed; then 
the fool made bare his knotty -looking feet and 
legs, and followed him ; and finally the old man 
exposed his calves also to our gaze. We had 
never had the good fortune to see an old man's 
legs before, and were surprised to find them 
fair and plump as an infant's, and we thought 
that he took a pride in exhibiting them. He 
then proceeded to make preparations for retir- 
ing, discoursing meanwhile with Panurgic plain- 
ness of speech on the ills to which old humanity 
is subject. We were a rare haul for him. He 
could commonly get none but ministers to talk 
to, though sometimes ten of them at once, 
and he was glad to meet some of the laity at 
leisure. The evening was not long enough for 
him. As I had been sick, the old lady asked 
if I would not go to bed, — it was getting late 
for old people ; but the old man, who had not 
yet done his stories, said, "You ain't particular, 
are you? " 

"Oh, no," said I, "I am in no hurry. I be- 
lieve I have weathered the Clam cape." 



114 CAPE COD 

"They are good," said he; "I wish I had 
some of them now." 

"They never hurt me," said the old lady. 

" But then you took out the part that killed a 
cat," said I. 

At last we cut him short in the midst of his 
stories, which he promised to resume in the 
morning. Yet, after all, one of the old ladies 
who came into our room in the night to fasten 
the fire -board, which rattled, as she went out 
took the precaution to fasten us in. Old women 
are by nature more suspicious than old men. 
However, the winds howled around the house, 
and made the fire-boards as well as the case- 
ments rattle well that night. It was probably 
a windy night for • any locality, but we could 
not distinguish the roar which was 23roper to the 
ocean from that which was due to the wind 
alone. 

The sounds which the ocean makes must be 
very significant and interesting to those who live 
near it. When I was leaving the shore at this 
place the next summer, and had got a quarter 
of a mile distant, ascending a hill, I was startled 
by a sudden, loud sound from the sea, as if a 
large steamer were letting off steam by the shore, 
so that I caught my breath and felt my blood 
run cold for an instant, and I turned about, ex- 
pecting to see one of the Atlantic steamers thus 



THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 115 

far out of her course, but there was nothing un- 
usual to be seen. There was a low bank at the 
entrance of the Hollow, between me and the 
ocean, and suspecting that I might have risen 
into another stratum of air in ascending the 
hill, — which had wafted to me only the ordi- 
nary roar of the sea, — I immediately descended 
again, to see if I lost hearing of it; but, with- 
out regard to my ascending or descending, it 
died away in a minute or two, and yet there was 
scarcely any wind all the while. The old man 
said that this was what they called the "rut," a 
peculiar roar of the sea before the wind changes, 
which, however, he could not account for. He 
thought that he could tell all about the weather 
from the sounds which the sea made. 

Old Josselyn, who came to New England in 
1638, has it among his weather-signs, that "the 
resounding of the sea from the shore, and mur- 
muring of the winds in the woods, without ap- 
parent wind, sheweth wind to follow." 

Being on another part of the coast one night 
since this, I heard the roar of the surf a mile 
distant, and the inhabitants said it was a sign 
that the wind would work round east, and we 
should have rainy weather. The ocean was 
heaped up somewhere at the eastward, and this 
roar was occasioned by its effort to preserve its 
equilibrium, the wave reaching the shore before 



116 CAPE COD 

tlie wind. Also the captain of a packet between 
this country and England told me that he some- 
times met with a wave on the Atlantic coming 
against the wind, perhaps in a calm sea, which 
indicated that at a distance the wind was blow- 
ing from an opposite quarter, but the undula- 
tion had traveled faster than it. Sailors tell of 
"tide-rips" and "ground-swells," which they 
suppose to have been occasioned by hurricanes 
and earthquakes, and to have traveled many 
hundred, and sometimes even two or three thou- 
sand miles. 

Before sunrise the next morning they let us 
out again, and I ran over to the beach to see the 
sun come out of the ocean. The old woman of 
eighty-four winters was already out in the cold 
morning wind, bare-headed, tripping about like 
a young girl, and driving up the cow to milk. 
She got the breakfast with dispatch, and with- 
out noise or bustle ; and meanwhile the old man 
resumed his stories, standing before us, who were 
sitting, with his back to the chimney, and eject- 
ing his tobacco -juice right and left into the fire 
behind him, without regard to the various dishes 
which were there preparing. At breakfast we 
had eels, buttermilk cake, cold bread, green 
beans, doughnuts, and tea. The old man talked 
a steady stream; and when his wife told him he 
had better eat his breakfast, he said*. "Don't 



THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 117 

hurry me; I have lived too long to be hurried." 
I ate of the apple-sauce and the doughnuts, 
which I thought had sustained the least detri- 
ment from the old man's shots, but my compan- 
ion refused the apple-sauce, and ate of the hot 
cake and green beans, which had appeared to 
him to occupy the safest part of the hearth. 
But on comparing notes afterward, I told him 
that the buttermilk cake was particularly ex- 
posed, and I saw how it suffered repeatedly, 
and therefore I avoided it ; but he declared that, 
however that might be, he witnessed that the 
apple-sauce was seriously injured, and had there- 
fore declined that. After breakfast we looked 
at his clock, which was out of order, and oiled 
it with some "hen's grease," for want of sweet 
oil, for he scarcely could believe that we were 
not tinkers or pedlers ; meanwhile, he told a story 
about visions, which had reference to a crack in 
the clock-case made by frost one night. He was 
curious to know to what religious sect we be- 
longed. He said that he had been to hear thir- 
teen kinds of preaching in one month, when he 
was young, but he did not join any of them, — 
he stuck to his Bible. There was nothing like 
any of them in his Bible. While I was shaving 
in the next room, I heard him ask my compan- 
ion to what sect he belonged, to which he an- 
swered, — 



118 CAPE COD 

"Oh, I belong to the Universal Brotherhood." 
"What 's that ? " he asked, "Sons o' Temper- 
ance?" 

Finally, filling our pockets with doughnuts, 
which he was pleased to find that we called by 
the same name that he did, and paying for our 
entertainment, we took out departure; but he 
followed us out of doors, and made us tell him 
the names of the vegetables which he had raised 
from seeds that came out of the Franklin. 
They were cabbage, broccoli, and parsley. As 
I had asked him the names of so many things, 
he tried me in turn with all the plants which 
grew in his garden, both wild and cultivated. 
It was about half an acre, which he cultivated 
wholly himself. Besides the common garden 
vegetables, there were yellow-dock, lemon balm, 
hyssoj), Gill - go - over - the - ground, mouse-ear, 
chick-weed, Roman wormwood, elecampane, and 
other plants. As we stood there, I saw a fish- 
hawk stoop to pick a fish out of his pond. 
"There," said I, "he has got a fish." 
"Well," said the old man, who was looking 
all the while, but could see nothing, "he didn't 
dive, he just wet his claws." 

And, sure enough, he did not this time, 
though it is said that they often do, but he 
merely stooi3ed low enough to pick him out with 
his talons ; but as he bore his shining prey over 



THE WELLFLEET OYSTERMAN 119 

the bushes, it fell to the ground, and we did not 
see that he recovered it. That is not their prac- 
tice. 

Thus, having had another crack with the old 
man, he standing bareheaded under the eaves, 
he directed us "athwart the fields," and we took 
to the beach again for another day, it being now 
late in the morning. , 

It was but a day or two after this that the 
safe of the Provincetown Bank was broken open 
and robbed by two men from the interior, and 
we learned that our hospitable entertainers did 
at least transiently harbor the suspicion that we 
were the men. 



VI 

THE BEACH AGAIN 

Our way to the high sand-bank, which I 
have described. as extending all along the coast, 
led, as usual, through patches of bayberry 
bushes, which straggled into the sand. This, 
next to the shrub-oak, was perhaps the most 
common shrub thereabouts. I was much at- 
tracted by its odoriferous leaves and small gray 
berries which are clustered about the short 
twigs, just below the last year's growth. I 
know of but two bushes in Concord, and they, 
being staminate plants, do not bear fruit. The 
berries gave it a venerable appearance, and they 
smelled quite spicy, like small confectionery. 
Robert Beverley, in his "History of Virginia," 
published in 1705, states that "at the mouth of 
their rivers, and all along upon the sea and bay, 
and near many of their creeks and swamps, 
grows the myrtle, bearing a berry, of which 
they make a hard, brittle wax, of a curious green 
color, which by refining becomes almost trans- 
parent. Of this they make candles, which are 
never greasy to the touch nor melt with lying in 



THE BEACH AGAIN 121 

the hottest weather; neither does the snuff of 
these ever offend the smell, like that of a tallow 
candle; but, instead of being disagreeable, if 
an accident puts a candle out, it yields a pleas- 
ant fragrancy to all that are in the room; inso- 
much that nice people often put them out on pur- 
pose to have the incense of the expiring snuff. 
The melting of these berries is said to have 
been first found out by a surgeon in New Eng- 
land, who performed wonderful things with a 
salve made of them." From the abundance of 
berries still hanging on the bushes, we judged 
that the inhabitants did not generally collect 
them for tallow, though we had seen a piece in 
the house we had just left. I have since made 
some tallow myself. Holding a basket beneath 
the bare twigs in April, I rubbed them together 
between my hands and thus gathered about a 
quart in twenty minutes, to which were added 
enough to make three pints, and I might have 
gathered them much faster with a suitable rake 
and a large shallow basket. They have little 
prominences like those of an orange all creased 
in tallow, which also fills the interstices down 
to the stone. The oily part rose to the top, 
making it look like a savory black broth, which 
smelled much like balm or other herb tea. You 
let it cool, then skim off the tallow from the 
surface, melt this again and strain it. I got 



122 CAPE COD 

about a quarter of a pound weight from my three 
pints, and more yet remained within the berries. 
A small portion cooled in the form of small flat- 
tish hemispheres, like crystallizations, the size of 
a kernel of corn (nuggets I called them as I 
picked them out from amid the berries). Lou- 
don says, that " cultivated trees are said to yield 
more wax than those that are found wild." ^ If 
you get any pitch on your hands in the pine- 
woods you have only to rub some of these ber- 
ries between your hands to start it off. But the 
ocean was the grand fact there, which made us 
forget both bayberries and men. 

To-day the air was beautifully clear, and the 
sea no longer dark and stormy, though the 
waves still broke with foam along the beach, 
but sparkling and full of life. Already that 
morning I had seen the day break over the sea 
as if it came out of its bosom : — 

" The saffron-robed Dawn rose in haste from the streams 
Of Ocean, that she might bring light to immortals and to 
mortals." 

The sun rose visibly at such a distance over 
the sea, that the cloud-bank in the horizon, 
which at first concealed him, was not perceptible 
until he had risen high behind it, and plainly 
broke and dispersed it, like an arrow. But as 
yet I looked at him as rising over land, and 

1 See Duplessy, Vig^taux B^sineuXf vol. ii., p. 60. 



THE BEACH AGAIN 123 

could not, without an effort, realize that he was 
rising over the sea. Already I saw some vessels 
on the horizon, which had rounded the Cape in 
the night, and were now well on their watery 
way to other lands. 

We struck the beach again in the south part 
of Truro. In the early part of the day, while 
it was flood tide, and the beach was narrow and 
soft, we walked on the bank, which was very 
high here, but not so level as the day before, 
being more interrupted by slight hollows. The 
author of the Description of the Eastern Coast 
says of this part, that "the bank is very high 
and steep. From the edge of it west, there is 
a strip of sand a hundred yards in breadth. 
Then succeeds low brushwood, a quarter of a 
mile wide, and almost impassable. After which 
comes a thick perplexing forest, in which not a 
house is to be discovered. Seamen, therefore, 
though the distance between these two vallies 
(Newcomb's and Brush Hollows) is great, must 
not attempt to enter the wood, as in a snow- 
storm they must undoubtedly perish." This is 
still a true description of the country, except 
that there is not much high wood left. 

There were many vessels, like gulls, skim- 
ming over the surface of the sea, now half con- 
cealed in its troughs, their dolphin-strikers 
ploughing the water, now tossed on the top of 



124 CAPE COD 

the billows. One, a barque standing down par- 
allel with the coast, suddenly furled her sails, 
came to anchor, and swung round in the wind, 
near us, only half a mile from the shore. At 
first we thought that her captain wished to com- 
municate with us, and perhaps we did not re- 
gard the signal of distress, which a mariner 
would have understood, and he cursed us for 
cold-hearted wreckers who turned our backs on 
him. For hours we could still see her anchored 
there behind us, and we wondered how she could 
afford to loiter so long in her course. Or was 
she a smuggler who had chosen that wild beach 
to land her cargo on? Or did they wish to 
catch fish, or paint their vessel? Erelong other 
barques, and brigs, and schooners, which had in 
the meanwhile doubled the Cape, sailed by her 
in the smacking breeze, and our consciences 
were relieved. Some of these vessels lagged 
behind, while others steadily went ahead. We 
narrowly watched their rig and the cut of their 
jibs, and how they walked the water, for there 
was all the difference between them that there 
is between living creatures. But we wondered 
that they should be remembering Boston and 
New York and Liverpool, steering for them, out 
there ; as if the sailor might forget his peddling 
business on such a grand highway. They had 
perchance brought oranges from the Western 



THE BEACH AGAIN 125 

Isles; and were they carrying back the peel? 
We might as well transport our old traps across 
the ocean of eternity. Is that but another 
"trading flood," with its blessed isles? Is 
Heaven such a harbor as the Liverpool docks? 

Still held on without a break the inland bar- 
rens and shrubbery, the desert and the high 
sand-bank with its even slope, the broad white 
beach, the breakers, the green water on the bar, 
and the Atlantic Ocean; and we traversed with 
delight new reaches of the shore; we took an- 
other lesson in sea-horses' manes and sea-cows' 
tails, in sea-jellies and sea-clams, with our new- 
gained experience. The sea ran hardly less 
than the day before. It seemed with every 
wave to be subsiding, because such was our ex- 
pectation, and yet when hours had elapsed we 
could see no difference. But there it was, bal- 
ancing itself, the restless ocean by our side, 
lurching in its gait. Each wave left the sand 
all braided or woven, as it were with a coarse 
woof and warp, and a distinct raised edge to its 
rapid work. We made no haste, since we 
wished to see the ocean at our leisure, and in- 
deed that soft sand was no place in which to be 
in a hurry, for one mile there was as good as 
two elsewhere. Besides, we were obliged fre- 
quently to empty our shoes of the sand which 
one took in in climbing or descending the bank. 



126 CAPE COD 

As we were walking close to the water's edge 
this morning, we turned round, by chance, and 
saw a large black object which the waves had 
just cast up on the beach behind us, yet too far 
off for us to distinguish what it was ; and when 
we were about to return to it, two men came 
running from the bank, where no human beings 
had appeared before, as if they had come out of 
the sand, in order to save it before another wave 
took it. As we approached, it took successively 
the form of a huge fish, a drowned man, a sail 
or a net, and finally of a mass of tow-cloth, part 
of the cargo of the Franklin, which the men 
loaded into a cart. 

Objects on the beach, whether men or inani- 
mate things, look not only exceedingly gro- 
tesque, but much larger and more wonderful 
than they actually are. Lately, when approach- 
ing the sea-shore several degrees south of this, 
I saw before me, seemingly half a mile distant, 
what appeared like bold and rugged cliffs on 
the beach, fifteen feet high, and whitened by 
the sun and waves; but after a few steps it 
proved to be low heaps of rags, — part of the 
cargo of a wrecked vessel, — scarcely more than 
a foot in height. Once also it was my business 
to go in search of the relics of a human body, 
mangled by sharks, which had just been cast 
up, a week after a wreck, having got the direc- 



THE BEACH AGAIN 127 

tion from a light-house : I should find it a mile 
or two distant over the sand, a dozen rods from 
the water, covered with a cloth, by a stick stuck 
up. I expected that I must look very narrowly 
to find so small an object, but the sandy beach, 
half a mile wide, and stretching farther than 
the eye could reach, was so perfectly smooth 
and bare, and the mirage toward the sea so 
magnifying, that when I was half a mile distant 
the insignificant sliver which marked the spot 
looked like a bleached spar, and the relics were 
as conspicuous as if they lay in state on that 
sandy plain, or a generation had labored to pile 
up their cairn there. Close at hand they were 
simply some bones with a little flesh adhering 
to them, in fact, only a slight inequality in the 
sweep of the shore. There was nothing at all 
remarkable about them, and they were singu- 
larly inoffensive both to the senses and the im- 
agination. But as I stood there they grew 
more and more imposing. They were alone 
with the beach and the sea, whose hollow roar 
seemed addressed to them, and I was impressed 
as if there was an understanding between them 
and the ocean which necessarily left me out, 
with my snivelling sympathies. That dead 
body had taken possession of the shore, and 
reigned over it as no living one could, in the 
name of a certain majesty which belonged to it. 



128 CAPE COD 

We afterward saw many small pieces of tow- 
cloth washed up, and I learn that it continued 
to be found in good condition, even as late as 
November in that year, half a dozen bolts at a 
time. 

We eagerly filled our pockets with the smooth 
round pebbles which in some places, even here, 
were thinly sprinkled over the sand, together 
with flat circular shells (/Scutellcef); but, as we 
had read, when they were dry they had lost 
their beauty, and at each sitting we emptied our 
pockets again of the least remarkable, until our 
collection was well culled. Every material was 
rolled into the pebble form by the waves; not 
only stones of various kinds, but the hard coal 
wdiich some vessel had dropped, bits of glass, 
and in one instance a mass of peat three feet 
long, where there was nothing like it to be seen 
for many miles. All the great rivers of the 
globe are annually, if not constantly, discharg- 
ing great quantities of lumber, which drifts to 
distant shores. I have also seen very perfect 
pebbles of brick, and bars of Castile soap from 
a wreck rolled into perfect cylinders, and still 
spirally streaked with red, like a barber's pole. 
When a cargo of rags is washed ashore, every 
old pocket and bag-like recess will be filled to 
bursting with sand by being rolled on the beach ; 
*uid on one occasion, the pockets in the clothing 



THE BEACH AGAIN 129 

of the wrecked being thus puffed up, even after 
they had been ripped open by wreckers, deluded 
me into the hope of identifying them by the 
contents. A pair of gloves looked exactly as if 
filled by a hand. The water in such clothing is 
soon wrung out and evaporated, but the sand, 
which works itself into every seam, is not so 
easily got rid of. Sponges, which are picked 
up on the shore, as is well known, retain some 
of th3 sand of the beach to the latest day, in 
spite of every effort to extract it. 

I found one stone on the top of the bank, of 
a dark gray color, shaped exactly like a giant 
clam (^Mactra solidisshna), and of the same size ; 
and, what was more remarkable, one half of the 
outside had shelled off and lay near it, of the 
same form and depth with one of the valves of 
this clam, while the other half was loose, leav- 
ing a solid core of a darker color within it. I 
afterward saw a stone resembling a razor clam, 
but it was a solid one. It appeared as if the 
stone, in the process of formation, had filled the 
mould which a clam-shell furnished; or the 
same law that shaped the clam had made a clam 
of stone. Dead clams, with shells full of sand, 
are called sand clams. There were many of the 
large clam-shells filled with sand; and some- 
times one valve was separately filled exactly 
even, as if it had beeij heaped and then scraped. 



130 CAPE COD 

Even among the many small stones on the top 
of the bank, I found one arrow-head. 

Beside the giant clam and barnacles, we 
found on the shore a small clam {llesodesma 
arctata), which I dug with my hands in num- 
bers on the bars, and which is sometimes eaten 
by the inhabitants, in the absence of the My a 
arenaria^ on this side. Most of their empty 
shells had been perforated by some foe. Also, 
the — 

Astarte castanea. 

The Edible Mussel {Mytilus eduUs) on the 
few rocks, and washed up in curious bunches of 
forty or fifty, held together by its rope-like 
byssus. 

The Scollop Shell (^Pecten concentricus), used 
for card-racks and pin-cushions. 

Cockles, or Cuckoos {JVatica heros)^ and 
their remarkable nidus, called "sand-circle," 
looking like the top of a stone jug without the 
stopple, and broken on one side, or like a flar- 
ing dickey made of sand-paper. Also, — 

Cancellaria Couthouyi (J\ and — 

Periwinkles (?) (^Fusus decemco status). 

We afterward saw some other kinds on the 
Bay side, Gould states that this Cape "has 
hitherto proved a barrier to the migrations of 
many species of Mollusca." — "Of the one hun- 
dred and ninety-seven species [which he de- 



THE BEACH AGAIN 131 

scribed in 1840 as belonging to Massachusetts], 
eighty-three do not pass to the South shore, and 
fifty are not found on the North shore of the 
Cape." 

Among Crustacea there were the shells of 
Crabs and Lobsters, often bleached quite white 
high up the beach; Sea or Beach Fleas (^Am- 
^ihii^odd)', and the cases of the Horse-shoe 
Crab, or Saucepan Fish (^Limulus Polyphe- 
mus), of which we saw many alive on the Bay 
side, where they feed pigs on them. Their 
tails were used as arrow-heads by the Indians. 

Of Kadiata, there were the Sea Chestnut or 
Egg (^Echinus gra?iulatus), commonly divested 
of its spines; flat circular shells (Scutella 
parma ?) covered with chocolate-colored spines, 
but becoming smooth and white, with five petal- 
like figures; a few Star-fishes or Five-fingers 
{Asterias rubens); and Sun-fishes or Sea-jellies 
{Aurelice). 

There was also at least one species of Sponge. 

The plants which I noticed here and there on 
the pure sandy shelf, between the ordinary 
high-water mark and the foot of the bank, were 
Sea Rocket {Cahile Americana)^ Saltwort 
(Salsola hali\ Sea Sandwort {Honhenya pep- 
loides), Sea Burdock {Xanthium echinatuni). 
Sea-side Spurge {Euphorbia polygonifolia); 
also, Beach Grass {Arundo, Psamma, or 



132 CAPE COD 

Calamagrostis arenaria\ Sea-side Golden-rod 
{SoUdago sempervirens), and tlie Beach Pea 
{Laihyrus maritimusi). 

Sometimes we helj)ed a wrecker turn over a 
larger log tlian usual, or we amused ourselves 
with rolling stones down the bank, but we rarely 
could make one reach the water, the beach was 
so soft and wide ; or we bathed in some shallow 
within a bar, where the sea covered us with 
sand at every flux, though it was quite cold and 
windy. The ocean there is commonly but a 
tantalizing prospect in hot weather, for with all 
that water before you, there is, as we were af- 
terward told, no bathing on the Atlantic side, 
on account of tlie undertow and the rumor of 
sharks. At the light-house both in Eastham 
and Truro, the only houses quite on the shore, 
they declared, the next year, that they would 
Tiot bathe there "for any sum," for they some- 
times saw the sharks tossed up and quiver for a 
moment on the sand. Others laughed at these 
stories, but perhaps they could afford to because 
they never bathed anywhere. One old wrecker 
told us that he killed a regular man-eating shark 
fourteen feet long, and hauled him out with his 
oxen, where we had bathed; and another, that 
his father caught a smaller one of the same kind 
that was stranded there, by standing him up on 
his snout so that the waves could not take him. 



THE BEACH AGAIN 133 

They will tell you tough stories of sharks all 
over the Cape, which I do not presume to doubt 
utterly, — how they will sometimes upset a 
boat, or tear it in pieces, to get at the man in 
it. I can easily believe in the undertow, but I 
have no doubt that one shark in a dozen years 
is enough to keep up the reputation of a beach 
a hundred miles long. I should add, however, 
that in July we walked on the bank here a 
quarter of a mile parallel with a fish about six 
feet in length, possibly a shark, which was 
prowling slowly along within two rods of the 
shore. It was of a pale brown color, singularly 
film-like and indistinct in the water, as if all 
nature abetted this child of ocean, and showed 
many darker transverse bars or rings whenever 
it came to the surface. It is well known that 
different fishes even of the same species are col- 
ored by the water they inhabit. We saw it go 
into a little cove or bathing-tub, where we had 
just been bathing, where the water was only 
four or five feet deep at that time, and after ex- 
ploring it go slowly out again ; but we continued 
to bathe there, only observing first from the 
bank if the cove was preoccupied. We thought 
that the water was fuller of life, more aerated 
perhaps than that of the Bay, like soda-water, 
for we were as particular as young salmon, and 
the expectation of encountering a shark did not 



134 CAPE COD 

subtract anything from its life-giving quali- 
ties. 

Sometimes we sat on the wet beach and 
watched the beach birds, sand-pipers, and oth- 
ers, trotting along close to each wave, and wait- 
ing fpr the sea to cast up their breakfast. The 
former {Charadrius melodus) ran with great 
rapidity, and then stood stock still, remarkably 
erect, and hardly to be distinguished from the 
beach. The wet sand was covered with small 
skipping Sea Fleas, which apparently made a 
part of their food. These last are the little 
scavengers of the beach, and are so numerous 
that they will devour large fishes, which have 
been cast up, in a very short time. One little 
bird not larger than a sparrow — it may have 
been a Phalaroj)e — would alight on the tur- 
bulent surface where the breakers were five or 
six feet high, and float buoyantly there like a 
duck, cunningly taking to its wings and lifting 
itself a few feet through the air over the foam- 
ing crest of each breaker, but sometimes outrid- 
ing safely a considerable billow which hid it 
some seconds, when its instinct told it that it 
would not break. It was a little creature thus 
to sport with the ocean, but it was as perfect a 
success in its way as the breakers in theirs. 
There was also an almost uninterrupted line of 
coots rising and falling with the waves, a few 



THE BEACH AGAIN 135 

rods from the shore, the whole length of the 
Cape. They made as constant a part of the 
ocean's border as the pads or pickerel- weed do 
of tliat of a pond. We read the following as to 
the Storm Petrel {Thalassidroma Wihonii), 
which is seen in the Bay as well as on the out- 
side. "The feathers on the breast of the Storm 
Petrel are, like those of all swimming birds, 
water-proof; but substances not susceptible of 
being wetted with water are, for that very rea- 
son, the best fitted for collecting oil from its 
surface. That function is performed by the 
feathers on the breast of the Storm Petrels as 
they touch on the surface; and though that 
may not be the only way in which they procure 
their food, it is certainly that in which they ob- 
tain great part of it. They dash along till they 
have loaded their feathers and then they pause 
upon the waves and remove the oil with their 
bills." 

Thus we kept on along the gently curving 
shore, seeing two or three miles ahead at once, 
— along this ocean sidewalk, where there was 
none to turn out for, with the middle of the 
road, the highway of nations, on our right, and 
the sand cliffs of the Cape on our left. We 
saw this forenoon a part of the wreck of a ves- 
sel, probably the Franklin, a large piece fifteen 
feet square, and still freshly painted. With » 



136 CAPE COD 

grapple and a line we could have saved it, for 
the waves repeatedly washed it within cast, but 
they as often took it back. It would have been 
a lucky haul for some poor wrecker, for I have 
been told that one man who paid three or four 
dollars for a part of the wreck of that vessel, 
sold fifty or sixty dollars' worth of iron out of 
it. Another, the same who picked up the cap' 
tain's valise with the memorable letter in it, 
showed me, growing in his garden, many pear 
and plum trees which washed ashore from her, 
all nicely tied up and labeled, and he said that 
he might have got five hundred dollars' worth; 
for a Mr. Bell was importing the nucleus of a 
nursery to be established near Boston. His 
turnip-seed came from the same source. Also 
valuable spars from the same vessel and from 
the Cactus lay in his yard. In short the inhab- 
itants visit the beach to see what they have 
caught as regularly as a fisherman his weir or a 
lumberer his boom; the Caj^e is their boom. 
I heard of. one who had recently picked up 
twenty barrels of apples in good condition, 
probably a part of a deck load thrown over in a 
storm. 

Though there are wreck-masters appointed to 
look after valuable property which must be ad- 
vertised, yet undoubtedly a great deal of value 
is secretly carried off. But are we not all 



THE BEACH AGAIN 137 

wreckers contriving that some treasure may be 
washed up on our beach, that we may secure it, 
and do we not infer the habits of these Nauset 
and Barnegat wreckers, from the common 
modes of getting a living ? 

The sea, vast and wild as it is, bears thus the 
waste and wrecks of human art to its remotest 
shore. There is no telling what it may not 
vomit up. It lets nothing lie; not even the 
giant clams which cling to its bottom. It is 
still heaving up the tow-cloth of the Franklin, 
and perhaps a piece of some old pirate's ship, 
wrecked more than a hundred years ago, comes 
ashore to-day. . Some years since, when a vessel 
was wrecked here which had nutmegs in her 
cargo, they were strewn all along the beach, and 
for a considerable time were not spoiled by the 
salt water. Soon afterward, a fisherman caught 
a cod which was full of them. Why, then, 
might not the Spice-Islanders shake their nut- 
meg-trees into the ocean, and let all nations who 
stand in need of them pick them up? How- 
ever, after a year, I found that the nutmegs 
from the Franklin had become soft. 

You might make a curious list of articles 
which fishes have swallowed, — sailors' open 
clasp - knives, and bright tin snuff-boxes, not 
knowing what was in them, — and jugs, and 
jewels, and Jonah. The other day I came 
across the following scrap in a newspaper. 



138 CAPE COD , 

" A Religious Fish. — A short time ag-o, mine host Stewart, 
of the Denton Hotel, pm'chased a rock-fish, weighing about 
sixty pounds. On opening it he found in it a certificate of 
membership of the M. E. Church, which we read as follows : — 

Member 
Methodist E. Church, 
Founded A. D. 1784. 
Quarterly Ticket. 18 

Minister. 

* For our light aiSiction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a 
far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.' — 2 Cor. iv. 17. 
* O what are all my sufferings here, 

If, Lord, thou coimt me meet 
With that enraptured host t' appear. 
And worship at thy feet.' 

" The paper was, of course, in a crumpled and wet condition, 
but on exposing it to the sun, and ironing the kinks out of it, 
it became quite legible. — Denton {Md.) Journal.'^ 

From time to time we saved a wreck ourselves, 
a box or barrel, and set it on its end, and ap- 
propriated it witli crossed sticks ; and it will lie 
there perhaps, respected by brother wreckers, 
until some more violent storm shall take it, 
really lost to man until wrecked again. We 
also saved, at the cost of wet feet only, a valu- 
able cord and buoy, part of a seine, with which 
the sea was playing, for it seemed ungracious 
to refuse the least gift which so great a person- 
age offered you. We brought this home and 
still use it for a garden line. I picked up a 
bottle half buried in the wet sand, covered with 
barnacles, but stoppled tight, and half full of 



THE BEACH AGAIN 139 

red ale, which still smacked of juniper, — all 
that remained I fancied from the wreck of a 
rowdy world, — that great salt sea on the one 
hand, and this little sea of ale on the other, pre- 
serving their separate characters. What if it 
could tell us its adventures over countless ocean 
waves ! Man would not be man through such 
ordeals as it had passed. But as I poured it 
slowly out on to the sand, it seemed to me that 
man himself was like a half -emptied bottle of pale 
ale, which Time had drunk so far, yet stoppled 
tight for a while, and drifting about in the ocean 
of circumstances, but destined erelong to mingle 
with the surrounding waves, or be spilled amid 
the sands of a distant shore. 

In the summer I saw two men fishing for Bass 
hereabouts. Their bait was a bullfrog, or sev- 
eral small frogs in a bunch, for want of squid. 
They followed a retiring wave, and whirling 
their lines round and round their heads with in- 
creasing rapidity, threw them as far as they 
could into the sea ; then retreating, sat down flat 
on the sand, and waited for a bite. It was liter- 
ally (or littorally) walking down to the shore, 
and throwing your line into the Atlantic. I 
should not have known what might take hold of 
the other end, whether Proteus or another. At 
any rate, if you could not pull him in, why, you 
might let him go without being pulled in your- 



140 CAPE COD 

self. And they knew by experience that it 
would be a Striped Bass, or perhaps a Cod, for 
these fishes play along near the shore. 

From time to time we sat under the lee of a 
sand-hill on the bank, thinly covered with coarse 
beach -grass, and steadily gazed on the sea, or 
watched the vessels going south, all Blessings of 
the Bay of course. We could see a little more 
than half a circle of ocean, besides the glimpses 
of the Bay which we got behind us; the sea 
there was not wild and dreary in all respects, 
for there were frequently a hundred sail in sight 
at once on the Atlantic. You can commonly 
count about eighty in a favorable summer day, 
and pilots sometimes land and ascend the bank 
to look out for those which require their ser- 
vices. These had been waiting for fair weather, 
and had come out of Boston Harbor together. 
The same is the case when they have been as- 
sembled in the Vineyard Sound, so that you may 
see but few one day, and a large fleet the next. 
Schooners with many jibs and stay-sails crowded 
all the sea road ; square-rigged vessels with their 
great height and breadth of canvas were ever 
and anon appearing out of the far horizon, or 
disappearing and sinking into it ; here and there 
a pilot-boat was towing its little boat astern to- 
ward some distant foreigner who had just fired 
a gun, the echo of which along the shore 



THE BEACH AGAIN 141 

sounded like the caving of the bank. We could 
see the pilot looking through his glass toward 
the distant ship which was putting back to speak 
with him. He sails many a mile to meet her; 
and now she puts her sails aback, and communi- 
cates with him alongside, — sends some import- 
ant message to the owners, and then bids fare- 
well to these shores for good and all; or, per- 
chance a propeller passed and made fast to some 
disabled craft, or one that had been becalmed, 
whose cargo of fruit might spoil. Though si- 
lently, and for the most part incommunicatively, 
going about their business, they were, no doubt, 
a source of cheerfulness and a kind of society to 
one another. 

To-day it was the Purple Sea, an epithet 
which I should not before have accepted. There 
were distinct patches of the color of a purple 
grape with the bloom rubbed off. But first and 
last the sea is of all colors. Well writes Gilpin 
concerning "the brilliant hues which are contin- 
ually playing on the surface of a quiet ocean," 
and this was not too turbulent at a distance from 
the shore. "Beautiful," says he, "no doubt in 
a high degree are those glimmering tints which 
often invest the tops of mountains ; but they are 
mere coruscations compared with these marine 
colors, which are continually varying and shift- 
ing into each other in all the vivid splendor of 



142 CAPE COD 

the rainbow, through the space often of several 
leagues." Commonly, in calm weather, foi half 
a mile from the shore, where the bottom tinges 
it, the sea is green, or greenish, as are some 
ponds; then blue for many miles, often with 
purple tinges, bounded in the distance by a light, 
almost silvery stripe ; beyond which there is gen- 
erally a dark blue rim, like a mountain ridge in 
the horizon, as if, like that, it owed its color to 
the intervening atmosphere. On another day, it 
will be marked with long streaks, alternately 
smooth and rippled, light-colored and dark, even 
like our inland meadows in a freshet, and show- 
ing which way the wind sets. 

Thus we sat on the foaming shore, looking on 
the wine-colored ocean, — 

0iV e</)' aKhs TToAiTjs, dpSwp iirl oXvoira irSvrov. 

Here and there was a darker spot on its surface, 
the shadow of a cloud, though the sky was so 
clear that no cloud would have been noticed 
otherwise, and no shadow would have been seen 
on the land, where a much smaller surface is 
visible at once. So, distant clouds and showers 
may be seen on all sides by a sailor in the course 
of a day, which do not necessarily portend rain 
where he is. In July we saw similar dark blue 
patches where schools of Menhaden rippled the 
surface, scarcely to be distinguished from the 



THE BEACH AGAIN 143 

shadows of clouds. Sometimes the sea was 
spotted with them far and wide, such is its in- 
exhaustible fertility. Close at hand you see 
their back fin, which is very long and sharp, 
projecting two or three inches above water. 
From time to time also we saw the white bellies 
of the Bass playing along the shore. 

It was a poetic recreation to watch those dis- 
tant sails steering for half fabulous ports, whose 
very names are a mysterious music to our ears ; 
Fayal, and Babel-mandel, ay, and Chagres, and 
Panama, — bound to the famous Bay of San 
Francisco, and the golden streams of Sacramento 
and San Joaquin, to Feather River and the 
American Fork, where Sutter's Fort presides, 
and inland stands the City de los Angeles. It 
is remarkable that men do not sail the sea with 
more expectation. Nothing remarkable was 
ever accomplished in a prosaic mood. The 
heroes and discoverers have found true more 
than was previously believed, only when they 
were expecting and dreaming of something more 
than their contemporaries dreamed of, or even 
themselves discovered, that is, when they were 
in a frame of mind fitted to behold the truth. 
Referred to the world's standard, they are al- 
ways insane. Even savages have indirectly sur- 
mised as much. Humboldt, speaking of Colum- 
bus approaching the New World, says: "The 



144 CAPE COD 

grateful coolness of the evening air, the ethereal 
purity of the starry firmament, the balmy fra- 
grance of flowers, wafted to him by the land 
breeze, all led him to suppose (as we are told by 
Herrera, in the Decades) that he was approach- 
ing the garden of Eden, the sacred abode of our 
first parents. The Orinoco seemed to him one 
of the four rivers which, according to the ven- 
erable tradition of the ancient world, flowed 
from Paradise, to water and divide the surface 
of the earth, newly adorned with plants." So 
even the expeditions for the discovery of El 
Dorado, and of the Fountain of Youth, led to 
real, if not compensatory discoveries. 

We discerned vessels so far off, when once 
we began to look, that only the tops of their 
masts in the horizon were visible, and it took a 
strong intention of the eye, and its most favor- 
able side, to see them at all, and sometimes we 
doubted if we were not counting our eyelashes. 
Charles Darwin states that he saw, from the base 
of the Andes, " the masts of the vessels at anchor 
in the bay of Valparaiso, although not less than 
twenty-six geographical miles distant," and that 
Anson had been surprised at the distance at 
which his vessels were discovered from the coast, 
without knowing the reason, namely, the great 
height of the land and the transparency of the 
air. Steamers may be detected much farther 



THE BEACH AGAIN 145 

than sailing vessels, for, as one says, when their 
hulls and masts of wood and iron are down, 
their smoky masts and streamers still betray 
them; and the same writer, speaking of the 
comparative advantages of bituminous and an- 
thracite coal for war-steamers, states that " from 
the ascent of the columns of smoke above the 
horizon, the motions of the steamers in Calais 
Harbor [on the coast of France] are at all times 
observable at Ramsgate [on the English coast], 
from the first lighting of the fires to the putting 
out at sea; and that in America the steamers 
burning the fat bituminous coal can be tracked 
at sea at least seventy miles before the hulls be- 
come visible, by the dense columns of black 
smoke pouring out of their chimneys, and trail- 
ing: alono^ the horizon." 

Though there were numerous vessels at this 
great distance in the horizon on every side, yet 
the vast spaces between them, like the spaces 
between the stars, — far as they were distant 
from us, so were they from one another — nay, 
some were twice as far from each other as from 
us, — impressed us with a sense of the immensity 
of the ocean, the "unfruitful ocean," as it has 
been called, and we could see what proportion 
man and his works bear to the globe. As we 
looked off, and saw the water growing darker 
and darker and deeper and deeper the farther 



146 CAPE COD 

we looked, till it was awful to consider, and it 
appeared to have no relation to the friendly 
land, either as shore or bottom, — of what use is 
a bottom if it is out of sight, if it is two or 
three miles from the surface, and you are to be 
drowned so long before you get to it, though it 
were made of the same stuff with your native 
soil? — over that ocean where, as the Veda 
says, "there is nothing to give support, nothing 
to rest upon, nothing to cling to," I felt that I 
was a land animal. The man in a balloon even 
may Commonly alight on the earth in a few mo- 
ments, but the sailor's only hope is that he may 
reach the distant shore. I could then appre- 
ciate the heroism of the old navigator. Sir 
Humphrey Gilbert, of whom it is related, that 
being overtaken by a storm when on his return 
from America, in the year 1583, far northeast- 
ward from where we were, sitting abaft with a 
book in his hand, just before he was swallowed 
up in the deep, he cried out to his comrades in 
the Hind, as they came within hearing, "We 
are as near to Heaven by sea as by land." I 
saw that it would not be easy to realize. 

On Cape Cod the next most eastern land you 
hear of is St. George's Bank (the fishermen tell 
of "Georges," "Cashus," and other sunken 
lands which they frequent). Every Cape man 
has a theory about George's Bank having been 



THE BEACH AGAIN 147 

an island once, and in their accounts they grad- 
ually reduce the shallowness from six, five, four, 
two fathoms, to somebody's confident assertion 
that he has seen a mackerel-gull sitting on a 
piece of dry land there. It reminded me, when 
I thought of the shipwrecks which had taken 
place there, of the Isle of Demons, laid down off 
this coast in old charts of the New World. 
There must be something monstrous, methinks, 
in a vision of the sea bottom from over some 
bank a thousand miles from the shore, more 
awful than its imagined bottomlessness ; a 
drowned continent, all livid and frothing at the 
nostrils, like the body of a drowned man, which 
is better sunk deep than near the surface. 

I have been surprised to discover from a 
steamer the shallowness of Massachusetts Bay 
itself. Off Billingsgate Point I could have 
touched the bottom with a pole, and I plainly 
saw it variously shaded with seaweed, at five or 
six miles from the shore. This is "The Shoal- 
ground of the Cape," it is true, but elsewhere 
the Bay is not much deeper than a country 
pond. We are told that the deepest water in 
the English Channel between Shakespeare's 
Cliff and Cape Gris-Nez, in France, is one hun- 
dred and eighty feet ; and Guyot says that " the 
Baltic Sea has a depth of only one hundred and 
twenty feet between the coasts of Germany and 



148 CAPE COD 

tliose of Sweden," and "the Adriatic between 
Venice and Trieste has a depth of only one hun- 
dred and thirty feet." A pond in my native 
town, only half a mile long, is more than one 
hundred feet deep. 

The ocean is but a larger lake. At midsum- 
mer you may sometimes see a strip of glassy 
smoothness on it, a few rods in width and many 
miles long, as if the surface there were covered 
with a thin pellicle of oil, just as on a country 
pond; a sort of stand-still, you would say, at 
the meeting or parting of two currents of air (if 
it does not rather mark the unrippled steadiness 
of a current of water beneath), for sailors tell 
of the ocean and land breeze meeting between 
the fore and aft sails of a vessel, while the latter 
are full, the former being suddenly taken aback. 
Daniel Webster, in one of his letters describing 
blue-fishing off Martha's Vineyard, referring to 
those smooth places, which fishermen and sailors 
call "slicks," says: "We met with them yester- 
day, and our boatman made for them, whenever 
discovered. He said they were caused by the 
blue-fish chopping up their prey. That is to 
say, those voracious fellows get into a school of 
menhaden, which are too large to swallow 
whole, and they bite them into pieces to suit 
their tastes. And the oil from this butchery, 
rising to the surface, makes the 'slick '." 



THE BEACH AGAIN 149 

Yet this same placid Ocean, as civil now as a 
city's harbor, a place for ships and commerce, 
will erelong be lashed into sudden fury, and all 
its caves and cliffs will resound with tumult. It 
will ruthlessly heave these vessels to and fro, 
break them in pieces in its sandy or stony jaws, 
and deliver their crews to sea-monsters. It will 
play with them like seaweed, distend them like 
dead frogs, and carry them about, now high, 
now low, to show to the fishes, giving them a 
nibble. This gentle Ocean will toss and tear 
the rag of a man's body like the father of mad 
bulls, and his relatives may be seen seeking the 
remnants for weeks along the strand. From 
some quiet inland hamlet they have rushed weep- 
ing to the unheard-of shore, and now stand un- 
certain where a sailor has recently been buried 
amid the sand-hills. 

It is generally supposed that they who have 
long been conversant with the Ocean can fore- 
tell, by certain indications, such as its roar and 
the notes of sea-fowl, when it will change from 
calm to storm; but probably no such ancient 
mariner as we dream of exists; they know no 
more, at least, than the older sailors do about 
this voyage of life on which we are all embarked. 
Nevertheless, we love to hear the sayings of old 
sailors, and their accounts of natural phenomena 
which totally ignore, and are ignored by, 



150 CAPE COD 

science; and possibly they have not always 
looked over the gunwale so long in vain. Kalm 
repeats a story which was told him in Philadel- 
phia by a Mr. Cock, who was one day sailing to 
the West Indies in a small yacht, with an old 
man on board who was well acquainted with 
those seas. "The old man sounding the depth, 
called to the mate to tell Mr. Cock to launch 
the boats immediately, and to put a sufficient 
number of men into them, in order to tow the 
yacht during the calm, that they might reach 
the island before them as soon as possible, as 
within twenty-four hours there would be a 
strong hurricane. Mr. Cock asked him what 
reasons he had to think so ; the old man replied, 
that on sounding, he saw the lead in the water 
at a distance of many fathoms more than he had 
seen it before ; that therefore the water was be- 
come clear all of a sudden, which he looked upon 
as a certain sign of an impending hurricane in 
the sea." The sequel of the story is, that by 
good fortune, and by dint of rowing, they man- 
aged to gain a safe harbor before the hurricane 
had reached its height ; but it finally raged with 
so much violence, that not only many ships were 
lost and houses unroofed, but even their own 
vessel in harbor was washed so far on shore that 
several weeks elapsed before it could be got off. 
The Greeks would not have called the ocean 



THE BEACH AGAIN 151 

arpvycTo^^ Or unfruitful, though it does not pro- 
duce wheat, if they had viewed it by the light of 
modern science, for naturalists now assert that 
"the sea, and not the land, is the principal seat 
of life," — though not of vegetable life. Dar- 
win affirms that "our most thickly inhabited 
forests appear almost as deserts when we come 
to compare them with the corresponding regions 
of the ocean." Agassiz and Gould tell us that 
"the sea teems with animals of all classes, far 
beyond the extreme point of flowering plants ; " 
but they add, that "experiments of dredging in 
very deep water have also taught us that the 
abyss of the ocean is nearly a desert;" — "so 
that modern investigations," to quote the words 
of Desor, "merely go to confirm the great idea 
which was vaguely anticipated by the ancient 
poets and philosophers, that the Ocean is the 
origin of all things." Yet marine animals and 
plants hold a lower rank in the scale of being 
than land animals and plants. "There is no 
instance known," says Desor, "of an animal 
becoming aquatic in its perfect state, after hav- 
ing lived in its lower stage on dry land," but as 
in the case of the tadpole, "the progress invari- 
ably points towards the dry land." In short, 
the dry land itself came through and out of the 
water in its way to the heavens, for, "in going 
back through the geological ages, we come to 



152 CAPE COD 

an epoch when, according to all appearances, 
the dry land did not exist, and when the surface 
of our globe was entirely covered with water." 
We looked on the sea, then, once more, not as 
(XTpuycTo?, or unfruitful, but as it has been more 
truly called, the "laboratory of continents." 

Though we have indulged in some placid re- 
flections of late, the reader must not forget that 
the dash and roar of the waves were incessant. 
Indeed, it would be well if he were to read with 
a large conch-shell at his ear. But notwith- 
standing that it was very cold and windy to-day, 
it was such cold as we thought would not cause 
one to take cold who was exposed to it, owing 
to the saltness of the air and the dryness of the 
soil. Yet the author of the old " Description of 
Wellfleet" says, "The atmosphere is very much 
impregnated with saline particles, which, per- 
haps, with the great use of fish, and the neglect 
of cider and spruce-beer, may be a reason why 
the people are more subject to sore mouths and 
throats than in other places." 



vn 

ACROSS THE CAPE 

When we have returned from the seaside, 
we sometimes ask ourselves why we did not 
spend more time in gazing at the sea; but very 
soon the traveler does not look at the sea more 
than at the heavens. As for the interior, if the 
elevated sand-bar in the midst of the ocean can 
be said to have any interior, it was an exceed- 
ingly desolate landscape, with rarely a cultivated 
or cultivable field in sight. We saw no villages, 
and seldom a house, for these are generally on 
the Bay side. It was a succession of shrubby 
hills and valleys, now wearing an autumnal tint. 
You would frequently think, from the character 
of the surface, the dwarfish trees, and the bear- 
berries around, that you were on the top of a 
mountain. The only wood in Eastham was on 
the edge of Wellfleet. The pitch-pines were 
not commonly more than fifteen or eighteen feet 
high. The larger ones were covered with 
lichens, — often hung with the long gray Usnea. 
There is scarcely a white-pine on the forearm of 
the Cape. Yet in the northwest part of East- 



154 CAPE COD 

ham, near tlie Camp Ground, we saw, the next 
summer, some quite rural, and even sylvan re- 
treats, for the Cape, where small rustling groves 
of oaks and locusts and whispering pines, on 
perfectly level ground, made a little paradise. 
The locusts, both transplanted and growing nat- 
urally about the houses there, appeared to flour- 
ish better than any other tree. There were 
thin belts of wood in Wellfleet and Truro, a 
mile or more from the Atlantic, but, for the 
most part, we could see the horizon through 
them, or, if extensive, the trees were not large. 
Both oaks and pines had often the same flat look 
with the apple-trees. Commonly, the oak woods 
twenty -five years old were a mere scraggy shrub- 
bery nine or ten feet high, and we could fre- 
quently reach to their topmost leaf. Much that 
is called "woods " was about half as high as this, 
— only patches of shrub-oak, bayberry, beach- 
plum, and wild roses, overrun with woodbine. 
When the roses were in bloom, these patches in 
the midst of the sand displayed such a profusion 
of blossoms, mingled with the aroma of the bay- 
berry, that no Italian or other artificial rose- 
garden could equal them. They were perfectly 
Elysian, and realized my idea of an oasis in the 
desert. Huckleberry bushes were very abun- 
dant, and the next summer they bore a remark- 
able quantity of that kind of gall called Huckle- 



ACROSS THE CAPE 155 

berry-apple, forming quite handsome though 
monstrous blossoms. But it must be added, 
that this shrubbery swarmed with wood -ticks, 
sometimes very troublesome parasites, and 
which it takes very horny fingers to crack. 

The inhabitants of these towns have a great 
regard for a tree, though their standard for one 
is necessarily neither large nor high ; and when 
they tell you of the large trees that once grew 
here, you must think of them, not as absolutely 
large, but large compared with the present gen- 
eration. Their "brave old oaks," of which 
they speak with so much respect, and which 
they will point out to you as relics of the primi- 
tive forest, one hundred or one hundred and 
fifty, ay, for aught they know, two hundred 
years old, have a ridiculously dwarfish appear- 
ance, which excites a smile in the beholder. 
The largest and most venerable which they will 
show you in such a case are, perhaps, not more 
than twenty or twenty -five feet high. I was 
especially amused by the Liliputian old oaks in 
the south part of Truro. To the inexperienced 
eye, which appreciated their proportions only, 
they might appear vast as the tree which saved 
his royal majesty, but measured they were 
dwarfed at once almost into lichens which a deer 
might eat up in a morning. Yet they will tell 
you that large schooners were once built of tim- 



156 CAPE COD 

ber which grew in Wellfleet. The old houses 
also are built of the timber of the Cape ; but 
instead of the forests in the midst of which they 
originally stood, barren heaths, with poverty- 
grass for heather, now stretch away on every 
side. The modern houses are built of what is 
called "dimension timber," imported from 
Maine, all ready to be set up, so that commonly 
they do not touch it again with an axe. Almost 
all the wood used for fuel is imported by vessels 
or currents, and of course all the coal. I was 
told that probably a quarter of the fuel and a 
considerable part of the lumber used in North 
Truro was drift-wood. Many get all their fuel 
from the beach. 

Of birds not found in the interior of the 
State, — at least in my neighborhood, — I heard, 
in the summer, the Black-throated Bunting 
{Fringilla Americana) amid the shrubbery, and 
in the open land the Upland Plover (Totanus 
Bartramms\ whose quivering notes were ever 
and anon prolonged into a clear, somewhat 
plaintive yet hawk-like scream, which sounded 
at a very indefinite distance. The bird may 
have been in the next field, though it sounded a 
mile off. 

To-day we were walking through Truro, a 
town of about eighteen hundred inhabitants. 
We had already come to Pamet River, which 



ACROSS THE CAPE 157 

empties into the Bay. This was the limit of the 
Pilgrims' journey up the Cape from Province- 
town, when seeking a place for settlement. It 
rises in a hollow within a few rods of the Atlan- 
tic, and one who lives near its source told us 
that in high tides the sea leaked through, yet 
the wind and waves preserve intact the barrier 
between them, and thus the whole river is stead- 
ily driven westward butt-end foremost, — foun- 
tain-head, channel, and light-house, at the 
mouth, all together. 

Early in the afternoon we reached the High- 
land Light, whose white tower we had seen ris- 
ing out of the bank in front of us for the last 
mile or two. It is fourteen miles from the 
Nauset Lights, on what is called the Clay 
Pounds, an immense bed of clay abutting on the 
Atlantic, and, as the keeper told us, stretching 
quite across the Cape, which is here only about 
two miles wide. We perceived at once a differ- 
ence in the soil, for there was an interruption of 
the desert, and a slight appearance of a sod un- 
der our feet, such as we had not seen for the last 
two days. 

After arranging to lodge at the light-house, 
we rambled across the Cape to the Bay, over a 
singularly ble^k and barren-looking country, 
consisting of rounded hills and hollows, called 
by geologists diluvial elevations and depressions, 



158 CAPE COD 

— a kind of scenery which has been compared 
to a chopped sea, though this suggests too sud- 
den a transition. There is a delineation of this 
very landscape in Hitchcock's Report on the 
Geology of Massachusetts, a work which, by its 
size at least, reminds one of a diluvial elevation 
itself. Looking southward from the light- 
house, the Cape appeared like an elevated pla- 
teau, sloping very regularly, though slightly, 
downward from the edge of the bank on the 
Atlantic side, about one hundred and fifty feet 
above the ocean, to that on the Bay side. On 
traversing this we found it to be interrupted by 
broad valleys or gullies, which become the hol- 
lows in the bank when the sea has worn up to 
them. They are commonly at right angles with 
the shore, and often extend quite across the 
Cape. Some of the valleys, however, are circu- 
lar, a hundred feet deep, without any outlet, as 
if the Cape had sunk in those places, or its 
sands had run out. The few scattered houses 
which we passed, being placed at the bottom of 
the hollows, for shelter and fertility, were, for 
the most part, concealed entirely, as much as if 
they had been swallowed up in the earth. Even 
a village with its meeting-house, which we had 
left little more than a stone's throw behind, had 
sunk into the earth, spire and all, and we saw 
only the surface of the upland and the sea on 



ACROSS THE CAPE 169 

either hand. When approaching it, we had 
mistaken the belfry for a summer-house on the 
phiin. We began to think that we might tum- 
ble into a village before we were aware of it, as 
into an ant-lion's hole, and be drawn into the 
sand irrecoverably. The most conspicuous ob- 
jects on the land were a distant windmill, or a 
meeting-house standing alone, for only they 
could afford to occupy an exposed place. A 
great part of the township, however, is a bar- 
ren, heath-like plain, and perhaps one third of 
it lies in common, though the property of indi- 
viduals. The author of the old "Description of 
Truro," speaking of the soil, says, "The snow, 
which would be of essential service to it pro- 
vided it lay level and covered the ground, is 
blown into drifts and into the sea." This pecu- 
liar open country, with here and there a patch 
of shrubbery, extends as much as seven miles, 
or from Pamet River on the south to High 
Head on the north, and from Ocean to Bay. 
To walk over it makes on a stranger such an im- 
pression as being at sea, and he finds it impos- 
sible to estimate distances in any weather. A 
windmill or a herd of cows may seem to be far 
away in the horizon, yet, after going a few rods, 
he will be close upon them. He is also deluded 
by other kinds of mirage. When, in the sum- 
mer, I saw a family a-blueberrying a mile off, 



160 CAPE COD 

walking about amid the dwarfish bushes which 
did not come up higher than their ankles, they 
seemed to me to be a race of giants, twenty feet 
high at least. 

The highest and sandiest portion next the 
Atlantic was thinly covered with beach - grass 
and indigo-weed. Next to this the surface of 
the upland generally consisted of white sand 
and gravel, like coarse salt, through which a 
scanty vegetation found its way up. It will 
give an ornithologist some idea of its barrenness 
if I mention that the next June, the month of 
grass, I found a night-hawk's eggs there, and 
that almost any square rod thereabouts, taken 
at random, would be an eligible site for such a 
deposit. The kildeer-plover, which loves a sim- 
ilar locality, also drops its eggs there, and fills 
the air above with its din. This upland also 
produced Cladonia lichens, poverty-grass, 
savory -leaved aster (^Diplopappus Unariifolius\ 
mouse-ear, bearberry, etc. On a few hillsides 
the savory-leaved aster and mouse-ear alone 
made quite a dense sward, said to be very pretty 
when the aster is in bloom. In some parts the 
two species of poverty -grass {Hudsonia tomen- 
tosa and ericoides), which deserve a better 
name, reign for miles in little hemispherical 
tufts or islets, like moss, scattered over the 
waste. They linger in bloom there tiU the mid- 



ACROSS THE CAPE 161 

die of July. Occasionally near the beach these 
rounded beds, as also those of the sea-sandwort 
(Honhenya peploides)^ were filled with sand 
within an inch of their tops, an^ were hard, like 
large ant-hills, while the surrounding sand was 
soft. In summer, if the poverty-grass grows at 
the head of a Hollow looking toward the sea, in 
a bleak position where the wind rushes up, the 
northern or exposed half of the tuft is some- 
times all black and dead like an oven-broom, 
while the opposite half is yellow with blossoms, 
the whole hillside thus presenting a remarkable 
contrast when seen from the poverty-stricken 
and the flourishing side. This plant, which in 
many places would be esteemed an ornament, is 
here despised by many on account of its being 
associated with barrenness. It might well be 
adopted for the Barnstable coat-of-arms, in a 
field sableux. I should be proud of it. Here 
and there were tracts of beach-grass mingled 
with the seaside golden - rod and beach - pea, 
which reminded us still more forcibly of the 
ocean. 

We read that there was not a brook in Truro. 
Yet there were deer here once, which must often 
have panted in vain ; but I am pretty sure that 
I afterward saw a small fresh-water brook emp- 
tying into the south side of Pamet River, though 
I was so heedless as not to taste it. At any 



162 CAPE COD 

rate, a little boy near by told me that he drank 
at it. There was not a tree as far as we could 
see, and that was many miles each way, the 
general level of the upland being about the same 
everywhere. Even from the Atlantic side we 
overlooked the Bay, and saw to Manomet Point 
in Plymouth, and better from that side because 
it was the highest. The ahnost universal bare- 
ness and smoothness of the landscape were as 
agreeable as novel, making it so much the more 
like the deck of a vessel. We saw vessels sail- 
ing south into the Bay, on the one hand, and 
north along the Atlantic shore, on the other, all 
with an aft wind. 

The single road which runs lengthwise the 
Cape, now winding over the plain, now through 
the shrubbery which scrapes the wheels of the 
stage, was a mere cart-track, in the sand, com- 
monly without any fences to confine it, and con- 
tinually changing from this side to that, to 
harder ground, or sometimes to avoid the tide. 
But the inhabitants travel the waste here and 
there pilgrim-wise and staff in hand, by narrow 
footpaths, through which the sand flows out and 
reveals the nakedness of the land. We shud- 
dered at the thought of living there and taking 
our afternoon walks over those barren swells, 
where we could overlook every step of our walk 
before taking it, and would have to pray for a 



ACROSS THE CAPE 163 

fog or a snow-storm to conceal our destiny. 
The walker there must soon eat his heart. 

In the north part of the town there is no 
house from shore to shore for several miles, and 
it is as wild and solitary as the Western Prai- 
ries — used to be. Indeed, one who has seen 
every house in Truro, will be surprised to hear 
of the number of the inhabitants, but perhaps 
five hundred of the men and boys of this small 
town were then abroad on their fishing-grounds. 
Only a few men stay at home to till the sand or 
watch for blackfish. The farmers are fisher- 
men-farmers and understand better ploughing 
the sea than the land. They do not disturb their 
sands much, though there is a plenty of sea-weed 
in the creeks, to say nothing of blackfish occa- 
sionally rotting on the shore. Between the 
Pond and East Harbor Village there was an in- 
teresting plantation of pitch - pines, twenty or 
thirty acres in extent, like those which we had 
already seen from the stage. One who lived 
near said that the land was purchased by two 
men for a shilling or twenty -five cents an acre. 
Some is not considered worth writing a deed for. 
This soil or sand, which was partially covered 
with poverty and beach grass, sorrel, etc., was 
furrowed at intervals of about four feet and the 
seed dropped by a machine. The pines had 
come up admirably and grown the first year 



164 CAPE COD 

tliree or four inches, and the second six inches 
and more. Where the seed had been lately 
planted the white sand was freshly exposed in 
an endless furrow winding round and round the 
sides of the deep hollows in a vortical, spiral 
manner, which produced a very singular effect, 
as if you were looking into the reverse side of a 
vast banded shield. This experiment, so im- 
portant to the Cape, appeared very successful, 
and perhaps the time will come when the greater 
part of this kind of land in Barnstable County 
will be thus covered with an artificial pine-for- 
est, as has been done in some parts of France. 
In that country 12,500 acres of downs had been 
thus covered in 1811 near Bayonne. They are 
called pignadas, and according to Loudon "con- 
stitute the principal riches of the inhabitants, 
where there was a drifting desert before." It 
seemed a nobler kind of grain to raise than corn 
even. 

A few years ago Truro was remarkable among 
the Cape towns for the number of sheep raised 
in it; but I was told that at this time only two 
men kept sheep in the town, and in 1855, a 
Truro boy ten years old told me that he had 
never seen one. They were formerly pastured 
on the unfenced lands or general fields, but now 
the owners were more particular to assert their 
rights, and it cost too much for fencing. The 



ACROSS THE CAPE 165 

rails are cedar from Maine, and two rails will 
answer for ordinary purposes, but four are re- 
quired for sheep. This was the reason assigned 
by one who had formerly kept them for not 
keeping them any longer. Fencing stuff is so 
expensive that I saw fences made with only one 
rail, and very often the rail when split was 
carefully tied with a string. In one of the vil- 
lages I saw the next summer a cow tethered by 
a rope six rods long, the rope long in proportion 
as the feed was short and thin. Sixty rods, ay, 
all the cables of the Cape, would have been no 
more than fair. Tethered in the desert for fear 
that she would get into Arabia Felix ! I helped 
a man weigh a bundle of hay which he was sell- 
ing to his neighbor, holding one end of a pole 
from which it swung by a steel-yard hook, and 
this was just half his whole crop. In short, the 
country looked so barren that I several times 
refrained from asking the inhabitants for a 
string or a piece of wrapping-paper, for fear I 
should rob them, for they plainly were obliged 
to import these things as well as rails, and where 
there were no news-boys, I did not see what they 
would do for waste paper. 

The objects around us, the makeshifts of fish- 
ermen ashore, often made us look down to see if 
we were standing on terra firma. In the wells 
everywhere a block and tackle were used to raise 



166 CAPE COD 

the bucket, instead of a windlass, and by almost 
every house was laid up a spar or a plank or two 
full of auger-holes, saved from a wreck. The 
windmills were partly built of these, and they 
were worked into the public bridges. The light- 
house keeper, who was having his barn shingled, 
told me casually that he had made three thou- 
sand good shingles for that purpose out of a mast. 
You would sometimes see an old oar used for a 
rail. Frequently also some fair-weather finery 
ripped off a vessel by a storm near the coast was 
nailed up against an outhouse. I saw fastened 
to a shed near the light-house a long new sign 
with the words "Anglo Saxon" on it in large 
gilt letters, as if it were a useless part which the 
ship could afford to lose, or which the sailors 
had discharged at the same time with the pilot. 
But it interested somewhat as if it had been a 
part of the Argo, clipped off in passing through 
the Symplegades. 

To the fisherman, the Cape itseK is a sort of 
store-ship laden with supplies, — a safer and 
larger craft which carries the women and chil- 
dren, the old men and the sick, and indeed sea- 
phrases are as common on it as on board a vessel. 
Thus is it ever with a sea-going people. The 
old Northmen used to speak of the "keel-ridge " 
of the country, that is, the ridge of the Doffra- 
field Mountains, as if the land were a boat turned 



ACROSS THE CAPE 167 

bottom up. I was frequently reminded of the 
Northmen here. The inhabitants of the Cape 
are often at once farmers and sea-rovers ; they 
are more than vikings or kings of the bays, for 
their sway extends over the open sea also. A 
farmer in Wellfleet, at whose house I afterward 
spent a night, who had raised fifty bushels of 
potatoes the previous year, which is a large crop 
for the Cape, and had extensive salt-works, 
pointed to his schooner, which lay in sight, in 
which he and his man and boy oocasionally ran 
down the coast a-trading as far as the Capes of 
Virginia. This was his market-cart, and his 
hired man knew how to steer her. Thus he 
drove two teams a-field, 

" ere the high seas appeared 
Under the opening eyelids of the morn." 

Though probably he would not hear much of the 
"gray -fly" on his way to Virginia. 

A great proportion of the inhabitants of the 
Cape are always thus abroad about their team- 
ing on some ocean highway or other, and the 
history of one of their ordinary trips would cast 
the Argonautic expedition into the shade. I 
have just heard of a Cape Cod captain who was 
expected home in the beginning of the winter 
from the West Indies, but was long since given 
up for lost, till his relations at length have 
heard with joy, that, after getting within forty 



168 CAPE COD 

miles of Cape Cod light, he was driven back by 
nine successive gales to Key West, between 
Florida and Cuba, and was once again shaping 
his course for home. Thus he spent his winter. 
In ancient times the adventures of these two or 
three men and boys would have been made the 
basis of a myth, but now such tales are crowded 
into a line of shorthand signs, like an algebraic 
formula in the shipping news. "Wherever 
over the world," said Palfrey in his oration at 
Barnstable, "you see the stars and stripes float- 
ing, you may have good hope that beneath them 
some one will be found who can tell you the 
soundings of Barnstable, or Wellfleet, or 
Chatham Harbor." 

I passed by the home of somebody's (or every- 
body's) Uncle Bill, one day over on the Ply- 
mouth shore. It was a schooner half keeled up 
on the mud; we aroused the master out of a 
sound sleep at noonday, by thumping on the 
bottom of his vessel till he presented himself at 
the hatchway, for we wanted to borrow his 
clam-digger. Meaning to make him a call, I 
looked out the next morning, and lo! he had 
run over to "the Pines" the evening before, 
fearing an easterly storm. He outrode the 
great gale in the spring of 1851, dashing about 
alone in Plymouth Bay. He goes after rock- 
weed, lighters vessels, and saves wrecks. I still 



ACROSS THE CAPE , 169 

saw him lying in the mud over at "the Pines" 
in i^e horizon, which place he could not leave if 
he would, till flood tide. But he would not 
then probably. This waiting for the tide is a 
singular feature in life by the seashore. A 
frequent answer is, "Well! you can't start for 
two hours yet." It is something new to a lands- 
man, and at first he is not disposed to wait. 
History says that "two inhabitants of Truro 
were the first who adventured to the Falkland 
Isles in pursuit of whales. This voyage was 
undertaken in the year 1774, by the advice of 
Admiral Montague of the British navy, and was 
crowned with success." 

At the Pond Village we saw a pond three 
eighths of a mile long densely filled with cat-tail 
flags, seven feet high, — enough for all the 
coopers in New England. 

The western shore was nearly as sandy as the 
eastern, but the water was much smoother, and 
the bottom was partially covered with the slender 
grass-like seaweed {Zostera\ which we had not 
seen on the Atlantic side ; there were also a few 
rude sheds for trying fish on the beach there, 
which made it appear less wild. In the few 
marshes on this side we afterward saw Sam- 
phire, Rosemary, and other plants new to us in- 
landers. 

In the summer and fall sometimes, hundreds 



170 CAPE COD 

of blackfish (the Social Whale, Glohicephalus 
melas of De Kay; called also Black Whale-fish, 
Howling Whale, Bottle-head, etc.), fifteen feet 
or more in length, are driven ashore in a single 
school here. I witnessed such a scene in July, 
1855. A carpenter who was working at the 
light-house arriving early in the morning re- 
marked that he did not know but he had lost 
fifty dollars by coming to his work; for as he 
came along the Bay side he heard them driving 
a school of blackfish ashore, and he had debated 
with himself whether he should not go and join 
them and take his share, but had concluded to 
come to his work. After breakfast I came over 
to this place, about two miles distant, and near 
the beach met some of the fishermen returning 
from their chase. Looking up and down the 
shore, I could see about a mile south some large 
black masses on the sand, which I knew must be 
blackfish, and a man or two about them. As I 
walked along towards them I soon came to a 
large carcass whose head was gone and whose 
blubber had been stripped off some weeks be- 
fore; the tide was just beginning to move it, 
and the stench comj^elled me to go a long way 
round. When I came to Great Hollow I found 
a fisherman and some boys on the watch, and 
counted about thirty blackfish, just killed, with 
many lance wounds, and the water was more or 



ACROSS THE CAPE 111 

less bloody around. They were partly on shore 
and partly in the water, held by a rope round 
their tails till the tide should leave them. A 
boat had been somewhat stove by the tail of 
one. They were a smooth, shining black, like 
India-rubber, and had remarkably simple and 
lumpish forms for animated creatures, with a 
blunt round snout or head, whale -like, and simple 
stiif-looking flippers. The largest were about 
fifteen feet long, but one or two were only five 
feet long, and still without teeth. The fisher- 
man slashed one with his jackknife, to show me 
how thick the blubber was, — about three 
inches ; and as I passed my finger through the 
cut it was covered thick with oil. The blubber 
looked like pork, and this man said that when 
they were trying it the boys would sometimes 
come round with a piece of bread in one hand, 
and take a piece of blubber in the other to eat 
with it, preferring it to pork scraps. He also 
cut into the flesh beneath, which was firm and 
red like beef, and he said that for his part he 
preferred it when fresh to beef. It is stated 
that in 1812 blackfish were used as food by the 
poor of Bretagne. They were waiting for the 
tide to leave these fishes high and dry, that they 
might strip off the blubber and carry it to their 
try-works in their boats, where they try it on 
the beach. They get commonly a barrel of oil, 



172 CAPE COD 

worth fifteen or twenty dollars, to a fish. There 
were many lances and harpoons in the boats, — 
much slenderer instruments than I had expected. 
An old man came along the beach with a horse 
and wagon distributing the dinners of the fisher- 
men, which their wives had put up in little pails 
and jugs, and which he had collected in the 
Pond Village, and for this service, I suppose, 
he received a share of the oil. If one could not 
tell his own pail, he took the first he came to. 

As I stood there they raised the cry of "an- 
other school," and we could see their black 
backs and their blowing about a mile north- 
ward, as they went leaping over the sea like 
horses. Some boats were already in pursuit 
there, driving them toward the beach. Other 
fishermen and boys running up began to jump 
into the boats and push them off from where I 
stood, and I might have gone too had I chosen. 
Soon there were twenty-five or thirty boats in 
pursuit, some large ones under sail, and others 
rowing with might and main, keeping outside of 
the school, those nearest to the fishes striking on 
the sides of their boats and blowing horns to drive 
them on to the beach. It was an exciting race. 
If they succeed in driving them ashore each boat 
takes one share, and then each man, but if they 
are compelled to strike them off shore each 
boat's company take what they strike. I 



ACROSS THE CAPE 173 

walked rapidly along the shore toward the north, 
while the fishermen were rowing still more 
swiftly to join their companions, and a little boy 
who walked by my side was congratulating him- 
self that his father's boat was beating another 
one. An old blind fisherman whom we met, 
inquired, "Where are they, I can't see. Have 
they got them?" In the mean while the fishes 
had turned and were escaping northward toward 
Provincetown, only occasionally the back of one 
being seen. So the nearest crews were com- 
pelled to strike them, and we saw several boats 
soon made fast, each to its fish, which, four or 
five rods ahead, was drawing it like a race-horse 
straight toward the beach, leaping half out of 
water blowing blood and water from its hole, 
and leaving a streak of foam behind. But they 
went ashore too far north for us, though we 
could see the fishermen leap out and lance them 
on the sand. ^It was just like pictures of whal- 
ing which I have seen, and a fisherman told me 
that it was nearly as dangerous. In his first 
trial he had been much excited, and in his haste 
had used a lance with its scabbard on, but nev- 
ertheless had thrust it quite through his fish. 

I learned that a few days before this one hun- 
dred and eighty blackfish had been driven ashore 
in one school at Eastham, a little farther south, 
and that the keeper of Billingsgate Point light 



174 CAPE COD 

went out one morning about the same time and 
cut his initials on the backs of a large school 
which had run ashore in the night, and sold his 
right to them to Provincetown for one thousand 
dollars, and probably Provincetown made as 
much more. Another fisherman told me that 
nineteen years ago three hundred and eighty 
were driven ashore in one school at Great Hol- 
low. In the Naturalists' Library, it is said 
that, in the winter of 1809-10, one thousand 
one hundred and ten "approached the shore of 
Hvalfiord, Iceland, and were captured." De 
Kay says it is not known why they are stranded. 
But one fisherman declared to me that they ran 
ashore in pursuit of squid, and that they gener- 
ally came on the coast about the last of July. 

About a week afterward, when I came to this 
shore, it was strewn, as far as I could see with a 
glass, with the carcasses of blackfish stripped 
of their blubber and their head^ cut off; the 
latter lying higher up. Walking on the beach 
was out of the question on account of the stench. 
Between Provincetown and Truro they lay in 
the very path of the stage. Yet no steps were 
taken to abate the nuisance, and men were 
catching lobsters as usual just off the shore. I 
was told that they did sometimes tow them out 
and sink them ; yet I wondered where they got 
the stones to sink them with. Of course they 



ACROSS THE CAPE 175 

might be made into guano, and Cape Cod is not 
so fertile that her inhabitants can afford to do 
without this manure, — to say nothing of the 
diseases they may produce. 

After my return home, wishing to learn what 
was known about the Blackfish, I had recourse to 
the reports of the zoological surveys of the State, 
and I found that Storer had rightfully omitted 
it in his Report on the Fishes, since it is not a 
fish; so I turned to Emmons's Report of the 
Mammalia, but was surprised to find that the 
seals and whales were omitted by him because 
he had had no opportunity to observe them. 
Considering how this State has risen and thriven 
by its fisheries, — that the legislature which au- 
thorized the Zoological Survey sat under the 
emblem of a codfish, — that Nantucket and New 
Bedford are within our limits, — that an early 
riser may find a thousand or fifteen hundred 
dollars' worth of blackfish on the shore in a 
morning, — that the Pilgrims saw the Indians 
cutting up a blackfish on the shore at Eastham, 
and called a part of that shore "Grampus Bay," 
from the number of blackfish they found there, 
before they got to Plymouth, — and that from 
that time to this these fishes have continued to 
enrich one or two counties almost annually, and 
that their decaying carcasses were now poison- 
ing the air of one county for more than thirty 



176 CAPE COD 

miles, — I thouglit it remarkable that neither 
the j)023ular nor scientific name was to be found 
in a re23ort on our mammalia, — a catalogue of 
the productions of our land and water. 

We had here, as well as all across the Cape, 
a fair view of Provincetown, five or six miles 
distant over the water toward the west, under 
its shrubby sand-hills, with its harbor now full 
of vessels whose masts mingled with the spires 
of its churches, and gave it the appearance of a 
quite large seaport town. 

The inhabitants of all the lower Cape towns 
enjoy thus the prospect of two seas. Standing 
on the western or larboard shore, and looking 
across to where the distant mainland looms, 
they can say. This is Massachusetts Bay; and 
then, after an hour's sauntering walk, they may 
stand on the starboard side, beyond which no 
land is seen to loom, and say. This is the Atlan- 
tic Ocean. 

On our way back to the light-house, by whose 
whitewashed tower we steered as securely as 
the mariner by its light at night, we passed 
through a graveyard, which apparently was 
saved from being blown away by its slates, for 
they had enabled a thick bed of huckleberry 
bushes to root themselves amid the graves. We 
thought it would be worth the while to read the 
epitaphs where so many were lost at sea; how- 



ACROSS THE CAPE 111 

ever, as not only their lives, but commonly 
their bodies also, were lost or not identified, 
there were fewer epitaphs of this sort than we 
expected, though there were not a few. Their 
graveyard is the ocean. Near the eastern side 
we started up a fox in a hollow, the only kind 
of wild quadruped, if I except a skunk in a salt- 
marsh, that we saw in all our walk (unless 
painted and box tortoises may be called quad- 
rupeds). He was a large, plump, shaggy fel- 
low, like a yellow dog, with, as usual, a white 
tip to his tail, and looked as if he had fared well 
on the Cape. He cantered away into the shrub- 
oaks and bayberry bushes which chanced to 
grow there, but were hardly high enough to con- 
ceal him. I saw another the next summer leap- 
ing over the top of a beach-plum a little farther 
north, a small arc of his course (which I trust is 
not yet run), from which I endeavored in vain 
to calculate his whole orbit; there were too 
many unknown attractions to be allowed for. I 
also saw the exuviae of a third fast sinking into 
the sand, and added the skull to my collection. 
Hence, I concluded that they must be plenty 
thereabouts ; but a traveler may meet with more 
than an inhabitant, since he is more likely to 
take an unfrequented route across the country. 
They told me that in some years they died off 
in great numbers by a kind of madness, under 



178 CAPE COD 

the effect of which they were seen whirling 
round and round as if in pursuit of their tails. 
In Crantz's account of Greenland, he says, 
" They (the foxes) live upon birds and their eggs, 
and, when they can't get them, upon crow-ber- 
ries, mussels, crabs, and what the sea casts up." 
Just before reaching the light-house, we saw 
the sun set in the Bay, — for standing on that 
narrow Cape was, as I have said, like being on 
the deck of a vessel, or rather at the masthead 
of a man-of-war, thirty miles at sea, though we 
knew that at the same moment the sun was set- 
ting behind our native hills, which were just be- 
low the horizon in that direction. This sight 
drove everything else quite out of our heads, 
and Homer and the Ocean came in again with a 
rush, — 

the shining torch of the sun fell into the ocean. 



VIII 

THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 

This light-house, known to mariners as the 
Cape Cod or Highland Light, is one of our 
"primary sea-coast lights," and is usually the 
first seen by those approaching the entrance of 
Massachusetts Bay from Europe. It is forty- 
three miles from Cape Ann Light, and forty- 
one from Boston Light. It stands about twenty 
rods from the edge of the bank, which is here 
formed of clay. I borrowed the plane and 
square, level and dividers, of a carpenter who 
was shingling a barn near by, and, using one of 
those shingles made of a mast, contrived a rude 
sort of quadrant, with pins for sights and pivots, 
and got the angle of elevation of the Bank op- 
posite the light-house, and with a couple of cod- 
lines the length of its slope, and so measured its 
height on the shingle. It rises one hundred and 
ten feet above its immediate base, or about one 
hundred and twenty-three feet above mean low 
water. Graham, who has carefully surveyed 
the extremity of the Cape, makes it one hundred 
and thirty feet. The mixed sand and clay lay 



180 CAPE COD 

at an angle of forty degrees with the horizon, 
where I measured it, but the clay is generally 
much steeper. No cow nor hen ever gets down 
it. Half a mile farther south the bank is fif- 
teen or twenty-five feet higher, and that ap- 
peared to be the highest land in North Truro. 
Even this vast clay bank is fast wearing away. 
Small streams of water trickling down it at in- 
tervals of two or three rods, have left the inter- 
mediate clay in the form of steep Gothic roofs 
fifty feet high or more, the ridges as sharp and 
rugged -looking as rocks; and in one place the 
bank is curiously eaten out in the form of a 
large semi-circular crater. 

According to the light-house keeper, the Cape 
is wasting here on both sides, though most on the 
eastern. In some places it had lost many rods 
within the last year, and, erelong, the light- 
house must be moved. We calculated, from 
his data^ how soon the Cape would be quite 
worn away at this point, "for," said he, "I can 
remember sixty years back." We were even 
more surprised at this last announcement — 
that is, at the slow waste of life and energy in 
our informant, for we had taken him to be not 
more than forty — than at the rapid wasting of 
the Cape, and we thought that he stood a fair 
chance to outlive the former. 

Between this October and June of the next 



THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 181 

year, I found that the bank had lost about forty 
feet in one place, opposite the light-house, and 
it was cracked more than forty feet farther from 
the edge at the last date, the shore being strewn 
with the recent rubbish. But I judged that 
generally it was not wearing away here at the 
rate of more than six feet annually. Any con- 
clusions drawn from the observations of a few 
years, or one generation only, are likely to prove 
false, and the Cape may balk expectation by its 
durability. In some places even a wrecker's 
foot-path down the bank lasts several years. 
One old inhabitant told us that when the light- 
house was built, in 1798, it was calculated that 
it would stand forty-five years, allowing the 
bank to waste one length of fence each year, 
"but," said he, "there it is" (or rather another 
near the same site, about twenty rods from the 
edge of the bank). 

The sea is not gaining on the Cape every- 
where, for one man told me of a vessel wrecked 
long ago on the north of Provincetown whose 
''''hones'''' (this was his word) are still visible 
many rods within the present line of the beach, 
half buried in sand. Perchance they lie along- 
side the timbers of a whale. The general state- 
ment of the inhabitants is, that the Cape is 
wasting on both sides, but extending itself on 
particular points on the south and west, as at 



182 CAPE COD 

Chatham and Monomoy Beaches, and at Bil- 
lingsgate, Long, and Race Points. James Free- 
man stated in his day that above three miles 
had been added to Monomoy Beach during the 
previous fifty years, and it is said to be still ex- 
tending as fast as ever. A writer in the Massa- 
chusetts Magazine, in the last century, tells us 
that "when the English first settled upon the 
Cape, there was an island off Chatham, at three 
leagues' distance, called Webb's Island, con- 
taining twenty acres, covered with red-cedar or 
savin. The inhabitants of Nantucket used to 
carry wood from it;" but he adds that in his 
day a large rock alone marked the spot, and the 
water was six fathoms deep there. The en- 
trance to Nauset Harbor, which was once in 
Eastham, has now traveled south into Orleans. 
The islands in Wellfleet Harbor once formed a 
continuous beach, though now small vessels pass 
between them. And so of many other parts of 
this coast. 

Perhaps what the Ocean takes from one part 
of the Cape it gives to another, — robs Peter to 
pay Paul. On the eastern side the sea appears 
to be everywhere encroaching on the land. Not 
only the land is undermined, and its ruins car- 
ried off by currents, but the sand in blown from 
the beach directly up the steep bank, where it is 
one hundred and fifty feet high, and covers the 



THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 183 

original surface there many feet deep. If you 
sit on the edge you will have ocular demonstra- 
tion of this by soon getting your eyes full. 
Thus the bank preserves its height as fast as it 
is worn away. This sand is steadily traveling 
westward at a rapid rate, "more than a hundred 
yards," says one writer, within the memory of 
inhabitants now living; so that in some places 
peat-meadows are buried deep under the sand, 
and the peat is cut through it; and in one place 
a large peat-meadow has made its appearance 
on the shore in the bank covered many feet deep, 
and peat has been cut there. This accounts for 
that great pebble of peat which we saw in the 
surf. The old oysterman had told us that many 
years ago he lost a "crittur" by her being 
mired in a swamp near the Atlantic side east of 
his house, and twenty years ago he lost the 
swamp itself entirely, but has since seen signs 
of it appearing on the beach. He also said that 
he had seen cedar stumps "as big as cart- 
wheels "(!) on the bottom of the Bay, three 
miles off Billingsgate Point, when leaning over 
the side of his boat in pleasant weather, and 
that that was dry land not long ago. Another 
tokl us that a log canoe known to have been 
buried many years before on the Bay side at 
East Harbor in Truro, where the Cape is ex- 
tremely narrow, appeared at length on the At- 



184 CAPE COD 

lantic side, the Cape having rolled over it, and 
an old woman said, — "Now, you see, it is true 
what I told you, that the Cape is moving." 

The bars along the coast shift with every 
storm, and in many places there is occasionally 
none at all. We ourselves observed the effect 
of a single storm with a high tide in the night, 
in July, 1855. It moved the sand on the beach 
opposite the light-house to the depth of six feet, 
and three rods in width as far as we could see 
north and south, and carried it bodily off no one 
knows exactly where, laying bare in one place a 
large rock five feet high which was invisible be- 
fore, and narrowing the beach to that extent. 
There is usually, as I have said, no bathing on 
the back side of the Cape, on account of the un- 
dertow, but when we were there last, the sea 
had, three months before, cast up a bar near this 
light-house, two miles long and ten rods wide, 
over which the tide did not flow, leaving a nar- 
row cove, then a quarter of a mile long, between 
it and the shore, which afforded excellent bath- 
ing. This cove had from time to time been 
closed up as the bar traveled northward, in one 
instance imprisoning four or five hundred whit- 
ing and cod, which died there, and the water as 
often turned fresh and finally gave place to 
sand. This bar, the inhabitants assured us, 
might be wholly removed, and the water six feet 
deep there in two or three days. 



THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 185 

The light-house keeper said that when the 
wind blowed strong on to the shore, the waves 
ate fast into the bank, but when it blowed off 
they took no sand away; for in the former case 
the wind heaped up the surface of the water next 
to the beach, and to preserve its equilibrium a 
strong undertow immediately set back again into 
the sea which carried with it the sand and what- 
ever else was in the way, and left the beach 
hard to walk on ; but in the latter case the un- 
dertow set on, and carried the sand with it, so 
that it was particularly difficult for shipwrecked 
men to get to land when the wind blowed on to 
the shore, but easier when it blowed off. This 
undertow, meeting the next surface wave on the 
bar which itself has made, forms part of the dam 
over which the latter breaks, as over an upright 
wall. The sea thus plays with the land, holding 
a sand-bar in its mouth awhile before it swallows 
it, as a cat plays with a mouse; but the fatal 
gripe is sure to come at last. The sea sends its 
rapacious east wind to rob the land, but before 
the former has got far with its prey, the land 
sends its honest west wind to recover some of its 
own. But, according to Lieutenant Davis, the 
forms, extent, and distribution of sand-bars and 
banks are principally determined, not by winds 
and waves, but by tides. 

Our host said that you would be surprised if 



186 CAPE COD 

you were on the beach when the wind blew a 
hurricane directly on to it, to see that none of 
the drift-wood came ashore, but all was carried 
directly northward and parallel with the shore 
as fast as a man can walk, by the inshore cur- 
rent, which sets strongly in that direction at 
flood tide. The strongest swimmers also are 
carried along with it, and never gain an inch 
toward the beach. Even a large rock has been 
moved half a mile northward along the beach. 
He assured us that the sea was never still on 
the back side of the Cape, but ran commonly as 
high as your head, so that a great part of the 
time you could not launch a boat there, and 
even in the calmest weather the waves run six 
or eight feet up the beach, though then you 
could get off on a plank. Champlain and Pour- 
trincourt could not land here in 1606, on ac- 
count of the swell (la houlle), yet the savages 
came off to them in a canoe. In the Sieur de 
la Borde's "Relation des Caraibes," my edition 
of which was published at Amsterdam in 1711, 
at page 530 he says : — 

" Couroumon, a Caraibe, also a star [i. e. a 
god], makes the great lames a la mer, and over- 
turns canoes. Lames a la mer are the long 
vagues which are not broken (^entrecoupees)^ and 
such as one sees come to land all in one piece, 
from one end of a beach to another, so that. 



THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 187 

however little wind there may be, a shallop or 
a canoe could hardly land {ahorder terre) with- 
out turning over, or being filled with water." 

But on the Bay side the water even at its edge 
is often as smooth and still as in a pond. Com- 
monly there are no boats used along this beach. 
There was a boat belonging to the Highland 
Light which the next keeper after he had been 
there a year had not launched, though he said 
that there was good fishing just off the shore. 
Generally the life boats cannot be used when 
needed. When the waves run very high it is 
impossible to get a boat off, however skillfully 
you steer it, for it will often be completely cov- 
ered by the curving edge of the approaching 
breaker as by an arch, and so filled with water, 
or it will be lifted up by its bows, turned di- 
rectly over backwards and all the contents 
spilled out. A spar thirty feet long is served 
in the same way. 

I heard of a party who went off fishing back 
of Wellfleet some years ago, in two boats, in 
calm weather, who, when they had laden their 
boats with fish, and approached the land again, 
found such a swell breaking on it, though there 
was no wind, that they were afraid to enter it. 
At first they thought to pull for Provincetown, 
but night was coming on, and that was many 
miles distant. Their case seemed a desperate 



188 CAPE COD 

one. As often as they approached the shore and 
saw the terrible breakers that intervened, they 
were deterred, in short, they were thoroughly 
frightened. Finally, having thrown their fish 
overboard, those in one boat chose a favorable 
opportunity, and succeeded, by skill and good 
luck, in reaching the land, but they were unwill- 
ing to take the responsibility of telling the 
others when to come in, and as the other helms- 
man was inexperienced, their boat was swamped 
at once, yet all managed to save themselves. 

Much smaller waves soon make a boat "nail- 
sick," as the phrase is. The keeper said that 
after a long and strong blow there would be 
three large waves, each successively larger than 
the last, and then no large ones for some time, 
and that, when they wished to land in a boat, 
they came in on the last and largest wave. Sir 
Thomas Browne (as quoted in Brand's Popular 
Antiquities, vol. iii, p. 372), on the subject of 
the tenth wave being " greater or more danger- 
ous than any other," after quoting Ovid, — 

" Qui venit hie fluetus, fluctus supereminet omnes 
Posterior nono est, undecimoque prior," — 

says, " Which, notwithstanding, is evidently 
false ; nor can it be made out by observation 
either upon the shore or the ocean, as we have 
with diligence explored in both. And surely in 
vain we expect regularity in the waves of the 



THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 189 

sea, or in the particular motions thereof, as we 
may in its general reciprocations, whose causes 
are constant, and effects therefore correspond- 
ent ; whereas its fluctuations are but motions 
subservient, which winds, storms, shores, shelves, 
and every interjacency, irregulates." 

We read that the Clay Pounds were so called, 
''because vessels have had the misfortune to be 
pounded against it in gales of wind," which we 
regard as a doubtful derivation. There are 
small ponds here, upheld by the clay, which 
were formerly called the Clay Pits. Perhaps 
this, or Clay Ponds, is the origin of the name. 
Water is found in the clay quite near the sur- 
face ; but we heard of one man who had sunk 
a well in the sand close by, "till he could see 
stars at noonday," without finding any. Over 
this bare Highland the wind has full sweep. 
Even in July it blows the wings over the heads 
of the young turkeys, which do not know enough 
to head against it ; and in gales the doors and 
windows are blown in, and you must hold on to 
the light-house to prevent being blown into the 
Atlantic. They who merely keep out on the 
beach in a storm in the winter are sometimes 
rewarded by the Humane Society. If you 
would feel the full force of a tempest, take up 
your residence on the top of Mount Washington, 
or at the Highland Light, in Truro. 



190 CAPE COD 

It was said in 1794 that more vessels were 
cast away on the east shore of Truro than any- 
where in Barnstable County. Notwithstanding 
that this light-house has since been erected, after 
almost every storm we read of one or more ves- 
sels wrecked here, and sometimes more than a 
dozen wrecks are visible from this point at one 
time. The inhabitants hear the crash of vessels 
going to pieces as they sit round their hearths, 
and they commonly date from some memorable 
shipwreck. If the history of this beach could- 
be written from beginning to end, it would be a 
thrilling page in the history of commerce. 

Truro was settled in the year 1700 as Danger- 
field. This was a very appropriate name, for I 
afterward read on a monument in the grave- 
yard, near Pamet River, the following inscrip- 
tion : — 

Sacred 

to the memory of 

57 citizens of Truro, 

"who were lost in seven 

vessels, which 

foundered at sea in 

the memorable gale 

of Oct. 3d, 1841. 

Their names and ages by families were recorded 
on different sides of the stone. They are said 
to have been lost on George's Bank, and I was 
told that only one vessel drifted ashore on the 



THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 191 

back side of the Cape, with the boys locked into 
the cabin and drowned. It is said that the 
homes of all were "within a circuit of two 
miles." Twenty - eight inhabitants of Dennis 
were lost in the same gale ; and I read that " in 
one day, immediately after this storm, nearly or 
quite one hundred bodies were taken up and 
buried on Cape Cod." The Truro Insurance 
Company failed for want of skippers to take 
charge of its vessels. But the surviving inhab- 
itants went a-fishing again the next year as 
usual. I found that it would not do to speak 
of shipwrecks there, for almost every family 
has lost some of its members at sea. "Who 
lives in that house?" I inquired. "Three wid- 
ows," was the reply. The stranger and the in- 
habitant view the shore with very different eyes. 
The former may have come to see and admire 
the ocean in a storm ; but the latter looks on it 
as the scene where his nearest relatives were 
wrecked. When I remarked to an old wrecker 
partially blind, who was sitting on the edge of 
the bank smoking a pipe, which he had just lit 
with a match of dried beach-grass, that I sup- 
posed he liked to hear the sound of the surf, he 
answered, "No, I do not like to hear the sound 
of the surf." He had lost at least one son in 
"the memorable gale," and could tell many a 
tale of the shipwrecks which he had witnessed 
there. 



192 CAPE COD 

In the year 1717, a noted pirate named Bel- 
lamy was led on to the bar off Wellfleet by the 
captain of a S7ioio which he had taken, to whom , 
he had offered his vessel again if he would pilot 
him into Provincetown Harbor. Tradition says 
that the latter threw over a burning tar barrel 
in the night, which drifted ashore, and the pi- 
rates followed it. A storm coming on, their 
whole fleet was wrecked, and more than a hun- 
dred dead bodies lay along the shore. Six who 
escaped shipwreck were executed. "At times 
to this day," (1793), says the historian of Well- 
fleet, "there are King William and Queen 
Mary's coppers picked up, and pieces of silver 
called cob-money. The violence of the seas 
moves the sands on the outer bar, so that at 
times the iron caboose of the ship [that is, Bel- 
lamy's] at low ebbs has been seen." Another 
tells us that, "For many years after this ship- 
wreck, a man of a very singular and frightful 
aspect used every spring and autumn to be seen 
traveling on the Cape, who was supposed to 
have been one of Bellamy's crew. The pre- 
sumption is that he went to some place where 
money had been secreted by the pirates, to get 
such a supply as his exigencies required. 
When he died, many pieces of gold were found 
in a girdle which he constantly wore. 

As I was walking on the beach here in my 



THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 193 

last visit looking for shells and pebbles, just 
after that storm which I have mentioned as 
moving the sand to a great depth, not knowing 
but I might find some cob-money, I did actually 
pick up a French crown piece, worth about one 
dollar and six cents, near high-water mark, on 
the still moist sand, just under the abrupt, cav- 
ing base of tlie bank. It was of a dark slate 
color, and looked like a flat pebble, but still 
bore a very distinct and handsome head of Louis 
XV., and the usual legend on the reverse. Sit 
Nomen Domini Benedictum (Blessed be the 
Name of the Lord), a pleasing sentiment to read 
in the sands of the seashore, whatever it might 
be stamped on, and I also made out the date, 
1741. Of course, I thought at first that it was 
that same old button which I have found so 
many times, but my knife soon showed the sil- 
ver. Afterward, rambling on the bars at low 
tide, I cheated my companion by holding up 
round shells (Scutellce) between my fingers, 
whereupon he quickly stripped and came off to 
me. 

In the Revolution, a British ship of war called 
the Somerset was wrecked near the Clay 
Pounds, and all on board, some hundreds in 
number, were taken prisoners. My informant 
said that he had never seen any mention of this 
in the histories, but that at any rate he knew of 



194 CAPE COD 

a silver watch, which one of those prisoners by 
accident left there, which was still going to tell 
the story. But this event is noticed by some 
writers. 

The next summer I saw a sloop from Chatham 
dragging for anchors and chains just off this 
shore. She had her boats out at the work while 
she shuffled about on various tacks, and, when 
anything was found, drew up to hoist it on 
board. It is a singular employment, at which 
men are regularly hired and paid for their in- 
dustry, to hunt to-day in pleasant weather for 
anchors which have been lost, — the sunken 
faith and hope of mariners, to which they 
trusted in vain; now, perchance, it is the rusty 
one of some old pirate's ship or Norman fisher- 
man, whose cable parted here two hundred years 
ago, and now the best bower anchor of a Canton 
or a California ship, which has gone about her 
business. If the roadsteads of the spiritual 
ocean could be thus dragged, what rusty flukes 
of hope deceived and parted chain-cables of 
faith might again be windlassed aboard ! enough 
to sink the finder's craft, or stock new navies 
to the end of time. The bottom of the sea is 
strewn with anchors, some deeper and some shal- 
lower, and alternately covered and uncovered 
by the sand, perchance with a small length of 
iron cable still attached, — to which where is 



THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 195 

the other end? So many unconcluded tales to 
be continued another time. So, if we had div- 
ing-bells adapted to the spiritual deeps, we 
should see anchors with their cables attached, as 
thick as eels in vinegar, all wriggling vainly 
toward their holding-ground. But that is not 
treasure for us which another man has lost; 
rather it is for us to seek what no other man has 
found or can find, — not be Chatham men, 
dragging for anchors. 

The annals of this voracious beach ! who could 
write them, unless it were a shipwrecked sailor? 
How many who have seen it have seen it only in 
the midst of danger and distress, the last strip 
of earth which their mortal eyes beheld. Think 
of the amount of suffering which a single strand 
has witnessed ! The ancients would have repre- 
sented it as a sea-monster with open jaws, more 
terrible than Scylla and Charybdis. An inhabi- 
tant of Truro told me that about a fortnight af- 
ter the St. John was wrecked at Cohasset he 
found two bodies on the shore at the Clay 
Pounds. They were those of a man and a cor- 
pulent woman. The man had thick boots on, 
though his head was off, but "it was alongside." 
It took the finder some weeks to get over the 
sight. Perhaps they were man and wife, and 
whom God had joined the ocean currents had 
not put asunder. Yet by what slight accidents 



196 CAPE COD 

at first may they have been associated in their 
drifting. Some of the bodies of those passen- 
gers were picked up far out at sea, boxed up 
and sunk; some brought ashore and buried. 
There are more consequences to a shipwreck 
than the underwriters notice. The Gulf Stream 
may return some to their native shores, or drop 
them in some out-of-the-way cave of Ocean, 
where time and the elements will write new rid- 
dles with their bones. — But to return to land 
again. 

In this bank, above the clay, I counted in the 
summer, two hundred holes of the Bank Swallow 
within a space six rods long, and there were at 
least one thousand old birds within three times 
that distance, twittering over the surf. I had 
never associated them in my thoughts with the 
beach before. One little boy who had been a- 
birds' -nesting had got eighty swallows' eggs for 
his share ! Tell it not to the Humane Society ! 
There were many young birds on the clay be- 
neath, which had tumbled out and died. Also 
there were many Crow -blackbirds hopping about 
in the dry fields, and the Upland Plover were 
breeding close by the light-house. The keeper 
had once cut off one's wing while mowing, as 
she sat on her eggs there. This is also a favor- 
ite resort for gunners in the fall to shoot the 
Golden Plover. As aroimd the shores of a 



THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 197 

pond are seen devil' s-needles, butterflies, etc., 
so here, to my surprise, I saw at the same season 
great devil' s-needles of a size proportionably 
larger, or nearly as big as my finger, incessantly 
coasting up and down the edge of the bank, and 
butterflies also were hovering over it, and I 
never saw so many dorr-bugs and beetles of va- 
rious kinds as strewed the beach. They had 
apparently flown over the bank in the night, 
and could not get up again, and some had per- 
haps fallen into the sea and were washed ashore. 
They may have been in part attracted by the 
light-house lamps. 

The Clay Pounds are a more fertile tract 
than usual. We saw some fine patches of roots 
and corn here. As generally on the Cape, tlie 
plants had little stalk or leaf, but ran remark- 
ably to seed. The corn was hardly more than 
half as high as in the interior, yet the ears were 
large and full, and one farmer told us that he 
could raise forty bushels on an acre without 
manure, and sixty with it. The heads of the 
rye also were remarkably large. The Shadbush 
(Anielanchier)^ Beach Plums, and Blueberries 
(^Vaccinium Pennsylvaniciini)^ like the apple- 
trees and oaks, were very dwarfish, spreading 
over the sand, but at the same time very fruit- 
ful. The blueberry was but an inch or two 
high, and its fruit often rested on the ground, 



198 CAPE COD 

so that you did not suspect the presence of the 
bushes, even on those bare hills, until you were 
treading on them. I thought that this fertility 
must be owing mainly to the abundance of mois- 
ture in the atmosphere, for I observed that what 
little grass there was was remarkably laden with 
dew in the morning, and in summer dense im- 
prisoning fogs frequently last till midday, turn- 
ing one's beard into a wet napkin about his 
throat, and the oldest inhabitant may lose his 
way within a stone's throw of his house or be 
obliged to follow the beach for a guide. The 
brick house attached to the light-house was ex- 
ceedingly damp at that season, and writing- 
paper lost all its stiffness in it. It was impos- 
sible to dry your towel after bathing, or to press 
flowers without their mildewing. The air was 
so moist that we rarely wished to drink, though 
we could at all times taste the salt on our lips. 
Salt was rarely used at table, and our host told 
us that his cattle invariably refused it when it 
was offered them, they. got so much with their 
grass and at every breath, but he said that a 
sick horse or one just from the country would 
sometimes take a hearty draught of salt water, 
and seemed to like it and be the better for it. 

It was surprising to see how much water was 
contained in the terminal bud of the seaside 
golden-rod, standing in the sand early in July, 



THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 199 

and also how turnips, beets, carrots, etc., flour- 
ished even in pure sand. A man traveling by 
the shore near there not long before us noticed 
something green growing in the pure sand of the 
beach, just at high-water mark, and on ap- 
proaching found it to be a bed of beets flourish- 
ing vigorously, probably from seed washed out 
of the Franklin. Also beets and turnips came 
up in the seaweed used for manure in many 
parts of the Cape. This suggests how various 
plants may have been dispersed over the world 
to distant islands and continents. Vessels, with 
seeds in their cargoes, destined for particular 
ports, where perhaps they were not needed, have 
been cast away on desolate islands, and though 
their crews perished, some of their seeds have 
been preserved. Out of many kinds a few 
would find a soil and climate adapted to them, 
— become naturalized and perhaps drive out the 
native plants at last, and so fit the land for the 
habitation of man. It is an ill wind that blows 
nobody any good, and for the time lamentable 
shipwrecks may thus contribute a new vegetable 
to a continent's stock, and prove on the whole a 
lasting blessing to its inhabitants. Or winds 
and currents might effect the same without the 
intervention of man. What indeed are the 
various succulent plants which grow on the 
beach but such beds of beets and turnips, sprung 



200 CAPE COD 

originally from seeds which perhaps were cast 
on the waters for this end, though we do not 
know the Franklin which they came ont of ? In 
ancient times some Mr. Bell ( ?) was sailing this 
way in his ark with seeds of rocket, saltwort, 
sandwort, beach-grass, samphire, bayberry, pov- 
erty-grass, etc., all nicely labeled with directions, 
intending to establish a nursery somewhere; 
and did not a nursery get established, though 
he thought that he had failed? 

About the light-house I observed in the sum- 
mer the pretty Polygala polygama^ spreading 
ray -wise flat on the ground, white pasture this- 
tles (^Cirsium pumihwi)^ and amid the shrub- 
bery the Smilax glauca, which is commonly 
said not to grow so far north ; near the edge of 
the banks about half a mile southward, the 
broom crowberry (^Empetrum Conradii), for 
which Plymouth is the only locality in Massa- 
chusetts usually named, forms pretty green 
mounds four or five feet in diameter by one foot 
high, — soft, springy beds for the wayfarer. I 
saw it afterward in Provincetown, but prettiest 
of all the scarlet pimpernel, or poor-man's 
weather-glass (^Anagallis ar^jensis)^ greets you 
in fair weather on almost every square yard of 
sand. From Yarmouth, I have received the 
Chrysopsis falcata (golden aster), and Vacci- 
nium stamineum (Deerberry or Squaw Huckle- 



THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 201 

berry), with fruit not edible, sometimes as large 
as a cranberry (Sept. 7). 

The Highland Light-house,^ where we were 
staying, is a substantial-looking building of 
brick, painted white, and surmounted by an 
iron cap. Attached to it is the dwelling of the 
keeper, one story high, also of brick, and built 
by government. As we were going to spend 
the niorht in a lio^ht-house, we wished to. make 
the most of so novel an experience, and there- 
fore told our host that we would like to accom- 
pany him when he went to light up. At rather 
early candle-light he lighted a small Japan 
lamp, allowing it to smoke rather more than we 
like on ordinary occasions, and told us to follow 
him. He led the way first through his bed- 
room, which was placed nearest to the light- 
house, and then through a long, narrow, covered 
passage-way, between whitewashed walls like a 
prison entry, into the lower part of the light- 
house, where many great butts of oil were ar- 
ranged around ; thence we ascended by a wind- 
ing and open iron stairway, with a steadily 
increasing scent of oil and lamp-smoke, to a 
trap-door in an iron floor, and through this into 
the lantern. It was a neat building, with every- 
thing in apple-pie order, and no danger of any- 

1 The light -house has since been rebuilt, and shows a Fres< 
nel light. 



202 CAPE COD 

thing rusting there for want of oil. The light 
consisted of fifteen argand lamps, placed within 
smooth concave reflectors twenty-one inches in 
diameter, and arranged in two horizontal circles 
one above the other, facing every way excepting 
directly down the Cape. These were sur- 
rounded, at a distance of two or three feet, by 
large plate-glass windows, which defied the 
storms, with iron sashes, on which rested the 
iron cap. All the iron work, except the floor, 
was painted white. And thus the light-house 
was completed. We walked slowly round in 
that narrow space as the keeper lighted each 
lamp in succession, conversing with him at the 
same moment that many a sailor on the deep 
witnessed the lighting of the Highland Light. 
His duty was to fill and trim and light his 
lamps, and keep bright the reflectors. He filled 
them every morning, and trimmed them com- 
monly once in the course of the night. He com- 
plained of the quality of the oil which was fur- 
nished. This house consumes about eight hun- 
dred gallons in a year, which cost not far from 
one dollar a gallon; but perhaps a few lives 
would be saved if better oil were provided. 
Another light-house keeper said that the same 
proportion of winter-strained oil was sent to the 
southernmost light-house in the Union as to the 
most northern. Formerly, when this light- 



THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 203 

house had windows with small and thin panes, 
a severe storm would sometimes break the glass, 
and then they were obliged to put up a wooden 
shutter in haste to save their lights and reflec- 
tors, — and sometimes in tempests, when the 
mariner stood most in need of their guidance, 
they had thus nearly converted the light-house 
into a dark lantern, which emitted only a few 
feeble rays, and those commonly on the land or 
lee side. He spoke of the anxiety and sense of 
responsibility which he felt in cold and stormy 
nights in the winter ; when he knew that many a 
poor fellow was depending on him, and his 
lamps burned dimly, the oil being chilled. 
Sometimes he was obliged to warm the oil in a 
kettle in his house at midnight, and fill his 
lamps over again, — for he could not have a fire 
in the light-house, it produced such a sweat on 
the windows. His successor told me that he 
could not keep too hot a fire in such a case. 
All this because the oil was poor. A govern- 
ment lighting the mariners on its wintry coast 
with summer-strained oil, to save expense! 
That were surely a summer-strained mercy. 

This keeper's successor, who kindly enter- 
tained me the next year, stated that one ex- 
tremely cold night, when this and all the neigh- 
boring lights were burning summer oil, but he 
had been provident enough to reserve a little 



204 CAPE COD 

winter oil against emergencies, lie was waked up 
witli anxiety, and found that Ms oil was con- 
gealed, and his lights almost extinguished; and 
when, after many hours' exertion, he had suc- 
ceeded in replenishing his reservoirs with winter 
oil at the wick end, and with difficulty had made 
them burn, he looked out and found that the 
other lights in the neighborhood, which were 
usually visible to him, had gone out, and he 
heard afterward that the Pamet River and Bil- 
lingsgate Lights also had been extinguished. 

Our host said that the frost, too, on the win- 
dows caused him much trouble, and in sultry 
summer nights the moths covered them and 
dimmed his lights ; sometimes even small birds 
flew against the thick plate glass, and were 
found on the ground beneath in the morning 
with their necks broken. In the spring of 1855 
he found nineteen small yellow birds, perhaps 
goldfinches or myrtle-birds, thus lying dead 
around the light-house; and sometimes in the 
fall he had seen where a golden plover had 
struck the glass in the night, and left the down 
and the fatty part of its breast on it. 

Thus he struggled, by every method, to keep 
his light shining before men. Surely the light- 
house keeper has a responsible, if an easy, office. 
When his lamp goes out, he goes out; or, at 
most, only one such accident is pardoned. 



THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 205 

I thought it a pity that some poor student did 
not live there, to profit by all that light, since 
he would not rob the mariner. "Well," he 
said, "I do sometimes come up here and read 
the newspaper when they are noisy down be- 
low." Think of fifteen argand lamps to read 
the newspaper by ! Government oil ! — light 
enough, perchance, to read the Constitution by ! 
I thought that he should read nothing less than 
his Bible by that light. I had a classmate who 
fitted for college by the lamps of a light-house, 
which was more light, we think, than the Uni- 
versity afforded. 

When we had come down and walked a dozen 
rods from the light-house, we found that we 
could not get the full strength of its light on the 
narrow strip of land between it and the shore, 
being too low for the focus, and we saw only so 
many feeble and rayless stars ; but at forty rods 
inland we could see to read though we were still 
indebted to only one lamp. Each reflector sent 
forth a separate "fan " of light, — one shone on 
the windmill, and one in the hollow, while the 
intervening spaces were in shadow. This light 
is said to be visible twenty nautical miles and 
more, from an observer fifteen feet above the 
level of the sea. We could see the revolving 
light at Race Point, the end of the Cape, about 
nine miles distant, and also the light on Long 



206 CAPE COD 

Point, at the entrance of Provincetown Harbor, 
and one of the distant Plymouth Harbor lights, 
across the Bay, nearly in a range with the last, 
like a star in the horizon. The keeper thought 
that the other Plymouth light was concealed 
by being exactly in a range with the Long 
Point Light. He told us that the mariner was 
sometimes led astray by a mackerel fisher's lan- 
tern, who was afraid of being run down in the 
night, or even by a cottager's light, mistaking 
them for some well-known light on the coast, 
and, when he discovered his mistake, was wont 
to curse the prudent fisher or the wakeful cot- 
tager without reason. 

Though it was once declared that Providence 
placed this mass of clay here on purpose to 
erect a light-house on, the keeper said that the 
light-house should have been erected half a mile 
farther south, where the coast begins to bend, 
and where the light could be seen at the same 
time with the Nauset lights, and distinguished 
from them. They now talk of building one 
there. It happens that the present one is the 
more useless now, so near the extremity of the 
Cape, because other light-houses have since been 
erected there. 

Among the many regulations of the Light- 
house Board, hanging against the wall here, 
many of them excellent, perhaps, if there were 



THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 207 

a regiment stationed here to attend to tliem, 
there is one requiring the keeper to keep an ac- 
count of the number of vessels which pass his 
light during the day. But there are a hundred 
vessels in sight at once, steering in all direc- 
tions, many on the very verge of the horizon, 
and he must have more eyes than Argus, and 
be a good deal farther sighted, to tell which are 
passing his light. It is an employment in some 
respects best suited to the habits of the gulls 
which coast up and down here, and circle over 
the sea. 

I was told by the next keeper, that on the 8th 
of June following, a particularly clear and 
beautiful morning, he rose about half an hour 
before sunrise, and having a little time to spare, 
for his custom was to extinguish his lights at 
sunrise, walked down toward the shore to see 
what he might find. When he got to the edge 
of the bank he looked up, and, to his astonish- 
ment, saw the sun rising, and already part way 
above the horizon. Thinking that his clock was 
wrong, he made haste back, and though it was 
still too early by the clock, extinguished his 
lamps, and when he had got through and come 
down, he looked out the window, and, to his 
still greater astonishment, saw the sun just 
where it was before, two thirds above the hori- 
zon. He showed me where its rays fell on the 



208 CAPE COD 

wall across the room. He proceeded to make a 
fire, and when he had done, there was the sun 
still at the same height. Whereupon, not trust- 
ing to his own eyes any longer, he called up his 
wife to look at it, and she saw it also. There 
were vessels in sight on the ocean, and their 
crews, too, he said, must have seen it, for its 
rays fell on them. It remained at that height 
for about fifteen minutes by the clock, and then 
rose as usual, and nothing else extraordinary 
happened during that day. Though accustomed 
to the coast, he had never witnessed nor heard 
of such a phenomenon before. I suggested that 
there might have been a cloud in the horizon in- 
visible to him, which rose with the sun, and his 
clock was only as accurate as the average; or 
perhaps, as he denied the possibility of this, it 
was such a looming of the sun as is said to occur 
at Lake Superior and elsewhere. Sir John 
Franklin, for instance, says in his Narrative, 
that when he was on the shore of the Polar Sea, 
the horizontal refraction varied so much one 
morning that "the upper limb of the sun twice 
appeared at the horizon before it finally rose." 

He certainly must be a son of Aurora to 
whom the sun looms, when there are so many 
millions to whom it glooms rather, or who never 
see it till an hour after it has risen. But it be- 
hooves us old stagers to keep our lamps trimmed 



THE HIGHLAND LIGHT 209 

and burning to the last, and not trust to the 
sun's looming. 

This keeper remarked that the centre of the 
flame should be exactly opposite the centre of 
the reflectors, and that accordingly, if he was 
not careful to turn down his wicks in the morn- 
ing, the sun falling on the reflectors on the 
south side of the building would set fire to 
them, like a burning-glass, in the coldest day, 
and he would look up at noon and see them all 
lighted! When your lamp is ready to give 
light, it is readiest to receive it, and the sun 
will light it. His successor said that he had 
never known them to blaze in such a case, but 
merely to smoke. 

I saw that this was a place of wonders. In 
a sea turn or shallow fog while I was there the 
next summer, it being clear overhead, the edge 
of the bank twenty rods distant appeared like a 
mountain pasture in the horizon. I was com- 
pletely deceived by it, and I could then under- 
stand why mariners sometimes ran ashore in 
such cases, especially in the night, supposing it 
to be far away, though they could see the land. 
Once since this, being in a large oyster boat two 
or three hundred miles from here, in a dark 
nio-ht, when there was a thin veil of mist on 
land and water, we came so near to running on 
to the land before our skipper was aware of it, 



210 CAPE COD 

that the first warning was my hearing the sound 
of the surf under my elbow, I could almost 
have jumped ashore, and we were obliged to go 
about very suddenly to prevent striking. The 
distant light for which we were steering, sup- 
posing it a light-house, five or six miles off, 
came through the cracks of a fisherman's bunk 
not more than six rods distant. 

The keeper entertained us handsomely in his 
solitary little ocean house. He was a man of 
singular patience and intelligence, who, when 
our queries struck him, rang as clear as a bell in 
response. The light-house lamp a few feet dis- 
tant shone full into my chamber, and made it as 
bright as day, so I knew exactly how the High- 
land Light bore all that night, and I was in no 
danger of being wrecked. Unlike the last, this 
was as still as a summer night. I thought as I 
lay there, half awake and half asleep, looking 
upward through the window at the lights above 
my head, how many sleepless eyes from far out 
on the Ocean stream — mariners of all nations 
spinning their yarns through the various watches 
of the night — were directed toward my couch. 



IX 

THE SEA AND THE DESERT 

The liglit-house lamps were still burning, 
though now with a silvery lustre, when I rose to 
see the sun come out of the Ocean ; for he still 
rose eastward of us ; but I was convinced that he 
must have come out of a dry bed beyond that 
stream, though he seemed to come out of the 
water. 

" The sun once more touched the fields, 
Mountuig' to heaven from the fair flowing 
Deep-running Ocean." 

Now we saw countless sails of mackerel fishers 
abroad on the deep, one fleet in the north just 
pouring round the Cape, another standing down 
toward Chatham, and our host's son went off to 
join some lagging member of the first which had 
not yet left the Bay. 

Before we left the light-house we were obliged 
to anoint our shoes faithfully with tallow, for 
walking on the beach, in the salt water and the 
sand, had turned them red and crisp. To coun- 
terbalance this, I have remarked that the sea- 
shore, even where muddy, as it is not here, is 



212 CAPE COD 

singularly clean ; for, notwithstanding the spat- 
tering of the water and mud and squirting of the 
clams, while walking to and from the boat, your 
best black pants retain no stain nor dirt, such 
as they would acquire from walking in the 
country. 

We have heard that a few days after this, 
when the Provincetown Bank was robbed, speedy 
emissaries from Provincetown made particular 
inquiries concerning us at this light-house. In- 
deed, they traced us all the way down the Cape, 
and concluded that we came by this unusual 
route down the back side and on foot, in order 
that we might discover a way to get off with our 
booty when we had committed the robbery. 
The Cape is so long and narrow, and so bare 
withal, that it is well-nigh impossible for a 
stranger to visit it without the knowledge of its 
inhabitants generally, unless he is wrecked on to 
it in the night. So, when this robbery oc- 
curred, all their suspicions seem to have at once 
centred on us two travelers who had just passed 
down it. If we had not chanced to leave the 
Cape so soon, we should probably have been 
arrested. The real robbers were two young men 
from Worcester County who traveled with a 
centre-bit, and are said to have done their work 
very neatly. But the only bank that we pried 
into was the great Cape Cod sand-bank, and we 



THE SEA AND THE DESERT 213 

robbed it only of an old French crown piece, 
some shells and pebbles, and the materials of 
this story. 

Again we took to the beach for another day 
(October 13), walking along the shore of the re- 
sounding sea, determined to get it into us. 
We wished to associate with the Ocean until it 
lost the pond-like look which it wears to a coun- 
tryman. We still thought that we could see the 
other side. Its surface was still more sparkling 
than the day before, and we beheld "the count- 
less smilings of the ocean waves;" though some 
of them were pretty broad grins, for still the 
wind blew and the billows broke in foam alons: 
the beach. The nearest beach to us on the 
other side, whither we looked, due east, was on 
the coast of Galicia, in Spain, whose capital is 
Santiago, though by old poets' reckoning it 
should have been Atlantis or the Hesperides; 
but heaven is found to be farther west now. At 
first we were abreast of that part of Portugal 
entre Douro e Jlino, and then Galicia and the 
port of Pontevedra opened to us as we walked 
along; but we did not enter, the breakers ran 
so high. The bold headland of Cape Finisterre, 
a little north of east, jutted toward us next, 
with its vain brag, for we flung back, — "Here 
is Cape Cod, — Cape Land's-Beginning." A 
little indentation toward the north, — for the land 



214 CAPE COD 

loomed to our imaginations by a common mi- 
rage, — we knew was tlie Bay of Biscay, and we 

sang : — 

" There we lay, till next day, 

In the Bay of Biscay O ! " 

A little south of east was Palos, where Co- 
lumbus weighed anchor, and farther yet the 
pillars which Hercules set up ; concerning which 
when we inquired at the top of our voices what 
was written on them, — for we had the morning 
sun in our faces, and could not see distinctly, — 
the inhabitants shouted JVe plus ultra (no more 
beyond), but the wind bore to us the truth only, 
plus ultra (more beyond), and over the Bay 
westward was echoed ultra (beyond). We 
spoke to them through the surf about the Far 
West, the true Hesperia, ew? Trepas or end of the 
tlay, the This Side Sundown, where the sun was 
extinguished in the Pacific, and we advised them 
to pull up stakes and plant those pillars of theirs 
on the shore of California, whither all our folks 
were gone, — the only ne plus ultra now. 
Whereat they looked crestfallen on their cliffs, 
for we had taken the wind out of all their sails. 

We could not perceive that any of their leav- 
ings washed up liere, though we picked up a 
child's toy, a small dismantled boat, which may 
have been lost at Pontevedra. 

The Cape became narrower and narrower as 



THE SEA AND THE DESERT 215 

we approached its wrist between Truro and 
Provincetown and the shore inclined more de- 
cidedly to the west. At the head of East Har- 
bor Creek, the Atlantic is separated but by half 
a dozen rods of sand from the tide-waters of the 
Bay. From the Clay Pounds the bank flatted 
off for the last ten miles to the extremity at 
Race Point, though the highest parts, which are 
called "islands " from their appearance at a dis- 
tance on the sea, were still seventy or eighty feet 
above the Atlantic, and afforded a good view of 
the latter, as well as a constant view of the Bay, 
there being no trees nor a hill sufficient to in- 
terrupt it. Also the sands began to invade the 
land more and more, until finally they had en- 
tire possession from sea to sea, at the narrowest 
part. For three or four miles between Truro 
and Provincetown there were no inhabitants 
from shore to shore, and there were but three 
or four houses for twice that distance. 

As we plodded along, either by the edge of 
the ocean, where the sand was rapidly drinking 
up the last wave that wet it, or over the sand- 
hills of the bank, the mackerel fleet continued 
to pour round the Cape north of us, ten or fif- 
teen miles distant, in countless numbers, 
schooner after schooner, till they made a city 
on the water. They were so thick that many 
appeared to be afoul of one another; now all 



216 CAPE COD 

standing on this tack, now on that. We saw 
how well the New-Englanders had followed up 
Captain John Smith's suggestions with regard 
to the fisheries, made in 1616, — to what a 
pitch they had carried "this contemptible trade 
of fish," as he significantly styles it, and were 
now equal to the Hollanders whose example he 
holds up for the English to emulate; notwith- 
standing that "in this faculty," as he says, "the 
former are so naturalized, and of their vents so 
certainly acquainted, as there is no likelihood 
they will ever be paralleled, having two or three 
thousand busses, flat-bottoms, sword-pinks, 
todes, and such like, that breeds them sailors, 
mariners, soldiers, and merchants, never to be 
wrought out of that trade and fit for any other." 
We thought that it would take all these names 
and more to describe the numerous craft which 
we saw. Even then, some years before our "re- 
nowned sires" with their "peerless dames" 
stepped on Plymouth Rock, he wrote, "New- 
foundland doth yearly fraught near eight hun- 
dred sail of ships with a silly, lean, skinny 
poor-john, and cor fish," though all their sup- 
plies must be annually transported from Europe. 
Why not plant a colony here then, and raise 
those supplies on the spot? "Of all the four 
parts of the world," saj^s he, "that I have yet 
seen, not inhabited, could I have but means to 



THE SEA AND THE DESERT 217 

transport a colony, I would rather live here than 
anywhere. And if it did not maintain itself, 
were we but once indifferently well fitted, let us 
starve." Then "fishing before your doors," 
you "may every night sleep quietly ashore, with 
good cheer and what fires you will, or, when 
you please, with your wives and family." Al- 
ready he anticipates "the new towns in New 
England in memory of their old," — and who 
knows what may be discovered in the "heart 
and entrails " of the land, "seeing even the very 
edges," etc., etc. 

All this has been accomplished, and more, 
and where is Holland now? Verily the Dutch 
have taken it. There was no long interval be- 
tween the suggestion of Smith and the eulogy 
of Burke. 

Still one after another the mackerel schooners 
hove in sight round the head of the Cape, 
"whitening all the sea road," and we watched 
each one for a moment with an undivided inter- 
est. It seemed a pretty sport. Here in the 
country it is only a few idle boys or loafers that 
go a-fishing on a rainy day; but there it ap- 
peared as if every able-bodied man and helpful 
boy in the Bay had gone out on a pleasure ex- 
cursion in their yachts, and all would at last 
land and have a chowder on the Cape. The 
gazetteer tells you gravely how many of the men 



218 CAPE COD 

and boys of these towns are engaged in the 
whale, cod, and mackerel fishery, how many go 
to the banks of Newfoundland, or the coast of 
Labrador, the Straits of Belle Isle or the Bay 
of Chaleurs (Shalbre, the sailors call it); as if I 
were to reckon up the number of boys in Con- 
cord who are engaged during the summer in 
the perch, pickerel, bream, horn-pout, and 
shiner fishery, of which no one keeps the statis- 
tics, — though I think that it is pursued with 
as much profit to the moral and intellectual man 
(or boy), and certainly with less danger to the 
physical one. 

One of my playmates, who was apprenticed 
to a printer, and was somewhat of a wag, asked 
his master one afternoon if he might go a-fish- 
ing, and his master consented. He was gone 
three months. When he came back, he said 
that he had been to the Grand Banks, and went 
to setting tyj^e again as if only an afternoon had 
intervened. 

I confess I was surprised to find that so many 
men spent their whole day, ay, their whole lives 
almost, a-fishing. It is remarkable what a se- 
rious business men make of getting their din- 
ners, and how universally shiftlessness and a 
groveling taste take refuge in a merely ant-like 
industry. Better go without your dinner, I 
thought, than be thus everlastingly fishing for 



THE SEA AND THE DESERT 219 

Jt like a cormorant. Of course, vietoed from 
the shore^ our pursuits in the country appear 
not a whit less frivolous. 

I once sailed three miles on a mackerel cruise 
myself. It was a Sunday evening after a very 
warm day in which there had been frequent 
thunder-showers, and I had walked along the 
shore from Cohasset to Duxbury. I wished to 
get over from the last place to Clark's Island, 
but no boat could stir, they said, at that stage 
of the tide, they being left high on the mud. 
At length I learned that the tavern-keeper, 
Winsor, was going out mackereling with seven 
men that evening, and would take me. When 
there had been due delay, we one after another 
straggled down to the shore in a leisurely man- 
ner, as if waiting for the tide still, and in India- 
rubber boots, or carrying our shoes in our 
hands, waded to the boats, each of the crew 
bearing an armful of wood, and one a bucket of 
new potatoes besides. Then they resolved that 
each should bring one more armful of wood, and 
that would be enough. They had already got 
a barrel of water, and had some more in the 
schooner. We shoved the boats a dozen rods 
over the mud and water till they floated, then 
rowing half a mile to the vessel climbed aboard, 
and there we were in a mackerel schooner, a 
fine stout vessel of forty-three tons, whose name 



220 CAPE COD 

1 forget. The baits were not dry on the hooks. 
There was the mill in which they ground the 
mackerel, and the trough to hold it, and the 
long-handled dipper to cast it overboard with; 
and already in the harbor we saw the surface 
rippled with schools of small mackerel, the real 
Scomber vernalis. The crew proceeded lei- 
surely to weigh anchor and raise their two sails, 
there being a fair but very slight wind; — and 
the sun now setting clear and shining on the 
vessel after the thunder-showers, I thought that 
I could not have commenced the voyage under 
more favorable auspices. They had four dories 
and commonly fished in them, else they fished 
on the starboard side aft where their lines hung 
ready, two to a man. The boom swung round 
once or twice, and Winsor cast overboard the 
foul juice of mackerel mixed with rain-water 
which remained in his trough, and then we 
gathered about the helmsman and told stories. 
I remember that the compass was affected by 
iron in its neighborhood and varied a few de- 
grees. There was one among us just returned 
from California, who was now going as pas- 
senger for his health and amusement. They 
expected to be gone about a week, to begin fish- 
ing the next morning, and to carry their fish 
fresh to Boston. They landed me at Clark's 
Island, where the Pilgrims landed, for my com- 



THE SEA AND THE DESERT 221 

panlons wished to get some milk for the voyage. 
But I had seen the whole of it. The rest was 
only going to sea and catching the mackerel. 
Moreover, it was as well that I did not remain 
with them, considering the small quantity of 
supplies they had taken. 

Now I saw the mackerel fleet on its fishing- 
cjrowid^ though I was not at first aware of it. 
So my experience was complete. 

It was even more cold and windy to-day than 
before, and we were frequently glad to take 
shelter behind a sand-hill. None of the ele- 
ments were resting. On the beach there is a 
ceaseless activity, always something going on, 
in storm and in calm, winter and summer, night 
and day. Even the sedentary man here enjoys 
a breadth of view which is almost equivalent to 
motion. In clear weather the laziest may look 
across the Bay as far as Plymouth at a glance, 
or over the Atlantic as far as human vision 
reaches, merely raising his eyelids; or if he is 
too lazy to look after all, he can hardly help 
hearing the ceaseless dash and roar of the 
breakers. The restless ocean may at any mo- 
ment cast up a whale or a wrecked vessel at 
your feet. All the reporters in the world, the 
most rapid stenographers, could not report the 
news it brings. No creature could move slowly 
where there was so much life around. The few 



222 CAPE COD 

wreckers were either going or coming, and tlie 
ships and the sand-pipers, and the screaming 
gulls overhead; nothing stood still but the 
shore. The little beach -birds trotted past close 
to the water's edge, or paused but an instant to 
swallow their food, keeping time with the ele- 
ments. I wondered how they ever got used to 
the sea, that they ventured so near the waves. 
Such tiny inhabitants the land brought forth! 
except one fox. And what could a fox do, 
looking on the Atlantic from that high bank? 
What is the sea to a fox ? Sometimes we met a 
wrecker with his cart and dog, — and his dog's 
faint bark at us wayfarers, heard through the 
roaring of the surf, sounded ridiculously faint. 
To see a little trembling dainty-footed cur stand 
on the margin of the ocean, and ineffectually 
bark at a beach-bird, amid the roar of the At- 
lantic ! Come with design to bark at a whale, 
perchance ! That sound will do for farmyards. 
All the dogs looked out of place there, naked 
and as if shuddering at the vastness; and I 
thought that they would not have been there had 
it not been for the countenance of their masters. 
Still less could you think of a cat bending her 
steps that way, and shaking her wet foot over 
the Atlantic ; yet even this happens sometimes, 
they tell me. In summer I saw the tender 
young of the Piping Plover, like chickens just 



THE SEA AND THE DESERT 223 

hatclied, mere pinches of down on two legs, 
running in troops, with a faint peep, along the 
edge of the waves. I used to see packs of half- 
wild dogs haunting the lonely beach on the 
south shore of Staten Island, in New York Bay, 
for the sake of the carrion there cast up ; and I 
remember that once, when for a long time I had 
heard a furious barking in the tall grass of the 
marsh, a pack of half a dozen large dogs burst 
forth on to the beach, pursuing a little one 
which ran straight to me for protection, and I 
afforded it with some stones, though at some 
risk to myself; but the next day the little one 
was the first to bark at me. Under these cir- 
cumstances I could not but remember the words 
of the poet : — 

"Blow, blow, thou winter wind. 
Thou art not so unkind 
As his ingratitude ; 
Thy tooth is not so keen, 
Because thou art not seen, 

Although thy breath be rude. 

" Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky, 
Thou dost not bite so nigh 

As benefits forgot ; 
Though thou the waters warp. 
Thy sting is not so sharp 

As friend remembered not." 

Sometimes, when I was approaching the car- 
cass of a horse or ox which lay on the beach 



224 CAPE COD 

there, where there was no living creature in 
sight, a dog would unexpectedly emerge from it 
and slink away with a mouthful of offal. 

The seashore is a sort of neutral ground, a 
most advantageous point from which to contem- 
plate this world. It is even a trivial place. 
The waves forever rolling to the land are too 
far-traveled and untamable to be familiar. 
Creeping along the endless beach amid the sun- 
squall and the foam, it occurs to us that we, 
too, are the product of sea-slime. 

It is a wild, rank place, and there is no flat- 
tery in it. Strewn with crabs, horse-shoes, and 
razor-clams, and whatever the sea casts up, — a 
vast morgue, where famished dogs may range in 
packs, and crows come daily to glean the pit- 
tance which the tide leaves them. The carcasses 
of men and beasts together lie stately up upon 
its shelf, rotting and bleaching in the sun and 
waves, and each tide turns them in their beds, 
and tucks fresh sand under them. There is 
naked Nature, — inhumanly sincere, wasting no 
thought on man, nibbling at the cliffy shore 
where gulls wheel amid the spray. 

We saw this forenoon what, at a distance, 
looked like a bleached log with a branch still 
left on it. It proved to be one of the principal 
bones of a whale, whose carcass, having been 
stripped of blubber at sea and cut adrift, had 



THE SEA AND THE DESERT 225 

been washed up some months before. It 
chanced that this was the most conclusive evi- 
dence which we met with to prove, what the 
Coj)enhagen antiquaries assert, that these shores 
were the Furdustrandas^ which Thorhall, the 
companion of Thorfinn during his expedition to 
Vinland in 1007, sailed past in disgust. It ap- 
pears that after they had left the Cape and ex- 
plored the country about Straum-Fiordr (Buz- 
zard's Bay!), Thorhall, who was disappointed 
at not getting any wine to drink there, deter- 
mined to sail north again in search of Vinland. 
Though the antiquaries have given us the origi- 
nal Icelandic, I prefer to quote their translation, 
since theirs is the only Latin which I know to 
have been aimed at Cape Cod. 

" Cum parati erant, sublato 
velo, cecinit Thorhallus : 
E6 redeamus, ubi conterranei 
sunt nostri ! faciamus alitem, 
expansi arenosi peritum, 
lata navis explorare curricula : 
dum procellam incitantes gladii 
morje impatientes, qui terram 
collaudant, Furdustrandas 
inhabitant et coquunt balaenas." 

In other words, "When they were ready and 
their sail hoisted, Thorhall sang : Let us return 
thither where our fellow-countrymen are. Let 
us make a bird^ skillful to fly through the 

^ I. e., a vesseL 



226 CAPE COD 

heaven of sand,^ to explore the broad track of 
ships; while warriors who impel to the tempest 
of swords,^ who praise the land, inhabit Won- 
der Strands, and cook whales,'^ And so he 
sailed north past Cape Cod, as the antiquaries 
say, "and was shipwrecked on to Ireland." 

Though once there were more whales cast up 
here, I think that it was never more wild than 
now. We do not associate the idea of antiquity 
with the ocean, nor wonder how it looked a 
thousand years ago, as we do of the land, for it 
was equally wild and unfathomable always. 
The Indians have left no traces on its surface, 
but it is the same to the civilized man and the 
savage. The aspect of the shore only has 
changed. The ocean is a wilderness reaching 
round the globe, wilder than a Bengal jungle, 
and fuller of monsters, washing the very 
wharves of our cities and the gardens of our 
seaside residences. Serpents, bears, hyenaSc 
tigers, rapidly vanish as civilization advances, 
but the most populous and civilized city cannot 
scare a shark far from its wharves. It is no 
further advanced than Singapore, with its ti- 
gers, in this respect. The Boston papers had 
never told me that there were seals in the har- 

^ The sea, which is arched over its sandy bottom like a 
heaven. 
2 Battle. 



THE SEA AND THE DESERT 227 

bor. I had always associated these with the 
Esquimaux and other outlandish people. Yet 
from the parlor windows all along the coast you 
may see families of them sporting on the flats. 
They were as strange to me as the merman 
would be. Ladies who never walk in the woods, 
sail over the sea. To go to sea ! Why, it is to 
have the experience of Noah, — to realize the 
deluge. Every vessel is an ark. 

We saw no fences as we walked the beach, 
no birchen riders, highest of rails, projecting 
into the sea to keep the cows from wading 
round, nothing to remind us that man was pro- 
prietor of the shore. Yet a Truro man did tell 
us that owners of land on the east side of that 
town were regarded as owning the beach, in or- 
der that they might have the control of it so far 
as to defend themselves against the encroach- 
ments of the sand and the beach-grass, — for 
even this friend is sometimes regarded as a foe ; 
but he said that this was not the case on the 
Bay side. Also I have seen in sheltered parts 
of the Bay, temporary fences running to low- 
water mark, the posts being set in sills or sleep- 
ers placed transversely. 

After we had been walking many hours, the 
mackerel fleet still hovered in the northern hori- 
zon nearly in the same direction, but farther off, 
hull down. Though their sails were set they 



228 CAPE COD 

never sailed away, nor yet came to anchor, but 
stood on various tacks as close together as ves- 
sels in a haven, and we, in our ignorance, 
thought that they were contending patiently 
with adverse winds, beatiug eastward; but w( 
learned afterward that they were even then on 
their fishing-ground, and that they caught mack- 
erel without taking in their mainsails or coming 
to anchor, "a smart breeze" (thence called a 
mackerel breeze) "being," as one says, "con- 
sidered most favorable " for this purpose. We 
counted about two hundred sail of mackerel 
fishers within one small arc of the horizon, and 
a nearly equal number had disapj)eared south- 
ward. Thus they hovered about the extremity 
of the Cape, like moths round a candle; the 
lights at Race Point and Long Point being 
bright candles for them at night, — and at this 
distance they looked fair and white, as if they 
had not yet flown into the light, but nearer at 
hand afterward, we saw how some had formerly 
singed their wings and bodies. 

A village seems thus, where its able-bodied 
men are all ploughing the ocean together, as a 
common field. In North Truro the women and 
girls may sit at their doors, and see where their 
husbands and brothers are harvesting their 
mackerel fifteen or twenty miles off, on the sea, 
with hundreds of white harvest wagons, just as 



THE SEA AND THE DESERT 229 

in the country the farmers' wives sometimes see 
their husbands working in a distant hillside 
field. But the sound of no dinner-horn can 
reach the fisher's ear. 

Having passed the narrowest part of the waist 
of the Cape, though still in Truro, for this 
township is about twelve miles long on the 
shore, we crossed over to the Bay side, not half 
a mile distant, in order to spend the noon on 
the nearest shrubby sand-hill in Provincetown, 
called Mount Ararat, which rises one hundred 
feet above the ocean. On our way thither we 
had occasion to admire the various beautiful 
forms and colors of the sand, and we noticed an - 
interesting mirage, which I have since found 
that Hitchcock also observed on the sands of the 
Cape. We were crossing a shallow valley in 
the desert, where the smooth and spotless sand 
sloped upward by a small angle to the horizon 
on every side, and at the lowest part was a long 
chain of clear but shallow pools. As we were 
approaching these for a drink, in a diagonal di- 
rection across the valley, they appeared inclined 
at a slight but decided angle to the horizon, 
though they were plainly and broadly connected 
with one another, and there was not the least 
ripple to suggest a current ; so that by the time 
we had reached a convenient part of one we 
seemed to have ascended several feet. They 



230 CAPE COD 

appeared to lie by magic on the side of the vale, 
like a mirror left in a slanting position. It was 
a very pretty mirage for a Provincetown desert, 
but not amounting to what, in Sanscrit, is 
called "the thirst of the gazelle," as there was 
real water here for a base, and we were able to 
quench our thirst after all. 

Professor Rafn, of Copenhagen, thinks that 
the mirage which I noticed, but which an old 
inhabitant of Provincetown, to whom I men- 
tioned it, had never seen nor heard of, had 
something to do with the name "Furdustrandas," 
i. e.. Wonder Strands, given, as I have said, in 
the old Icelandic account of Thorfinn's expedi- 
tion to Vinland in the year 1007, to a part of 
the coast on which he landed. But these sands 
are more remarkable for their length than for 
their mirage, which is common to all deserts, 
and the reason for the name which the North- 
men themselves give — "because it took a long 
time to sail by them " — is sufficient and more 
applicable to these shores. However, if you 
should sail all the way from Greenland to Buz- 
zard's Bay along the coast, you would get sight 
of a good many sandy beaches. But whether 
Thor-finn saw the mirage here or not, Thor-eau, 
one of the same family, did; and perchance it 
was because Leif the Lucky had, in a previous 
voyage, taken Thor-er and his people off the 



THE SEA AND THE DESERT 231 

rock in the middle of the sea, that Thor-eau 
was born to see it. 

This was not the only mirage which I saw on 
the Cape. That half of the beach next the bank 
is commonly level, or nearly so, while the other 
slopes downward to the water. As I was walk- 
ing upon the edge of the bank in Wellfleet at 
sundown, it seemed to me that the inside half of 
the beach sloped upward toward the water to 
meet the other, forming a ridge ten or twelve 
feet high the whole length of the shore, but 
higher always opposite to where I stood ; and I 
was not convinced of the contrary till I de- 
scended the bank, though the shaded outlines 
left by the waves of a previous tide but halfway 
down the apparent declivity might have taught 
me better. A stranger may easily detect what 
is strange to the oldest inhabitant, for the 
strange is his province. The old oysterman, 
speaking of gull-shooting, had said that you 
must aim under, when firing down the bank. 

A neighbor tells me that one August, looking 
through a glass from Naushon to some vessels 
which were sailing along near Martha's Vine- 
yard, the water about them appeared perfectly 
smooth, so that they were reflected in it, and 
yet their full sails proved that it must be rip- 
pled, and they who were with him thought that 
it was a mirage, i. e., a reflection from a haze. 



232 CAPE COD 

From the above-mentioned sand-liill we over- 
looked Provincetown and its harbor, now emp- 
tied of vessels, and also a wide expanse of 
ocean. As we did not wish to enter Province- 
town before night, though it was cold and windy, 
we returned across the deserts to the Atlantic 
side, and walked along the beach again nearly 
to Race Point, being still greedy of the sea in- 
fluence. All the while it was not so calm as the 
reader may suppose, but it was blow, blow, 
blow, — roar, roar, roar, — tramp, tramp, 
tramp, — without interruption. The shore now 
trended nearly east and west. 

Before sunset, having already seen the mack- 
erel fleet returning into the Bay, we left the sea- 
shore on the north of Provincetown, and made 
our way across the desert to the eastern extrem- 
ity of the town. From the first high sand-hill, 
covered with beach-grass and bushes to its top, 
on the edge of the desert, we overlooked the 
shrubby hill and swamp country which surrounds 
Provincetown on the north, and protects it, in 
some measure, from the invading sand. Not- 
withstanding the universal barrenness, and the 
contiguity of the desert, I never saw an au- 
tumnal landscape so beautifully painted as this 
was. It was like the richest rug imaginable 
spread over an uneven surface ; no damask nor 
velvet, nor Tyrian dye or stuffs, nor the work 



THE SEA AND THE DESERT 233 

of any loom, could ever match it. There was 
the incredibly bright red of the Huckleberry, 
and the reddish brown of the Bayberry, mingled 
with the briglit and living green of small Pitch- 
Pines, and also the duller green of the Bay- 
berry, Boxberry, and Plum, the yellowish green 
of the Shrub-Oaks, and the various golden and 
yellow and fawn-colored tints of the Birch and 
Maple and Aspen, — each making its own fig- 
ure, and, in the midst, the few yellow sand- 
slides on the sides of the hills looked like the 
white floor seen through rents in the rug. Com- 
ing from the country as I did, and many au- 
tumnal woods as I had seen, this was perhaps 
the most novel and remarkable sight that I saw 
on the Cape. Probably the brightness of the 
tints was enhanced by contrast with the sand 
which surrounded this tract. This was a part 
of the furniture of Cape Cod. We had for 
days walked up the long and bleak piazza which 
runs along her Atlantic side, then over the 
sanded floor of her halls, and now we were be- 
ing introduced into her boudoir. The hundred 
white sails crowding round Long Point into 
Provincetown Harbor, seen over the painted 
hills in front, looked like toy ships upon a man- 
tel-piece. 

The peculiarity of this autumnal landscape 
consisted in the lowness and thickness of the 



234 CAPE COD 

shrubbery, no less than in the brightness of the 
tints. It was like a thick stuff of worsted or a 
fleece, and looked as if a giant could take it up 
by the hem, or rather the tasseled fringe which 
trailed out on the sand, and shake it, though it 
needed not to be shaken. But no doubt the 
dust would Hy in that case, for not a little has 
accumulated underneath it. "Was it not such 
an autumnal landscape as this which suggested 
our high-colored rugs and carpets ? Hereafter 
when I look on a richer rug than usual, and 
study its figures, I shall think, there are the 
huckleberry hills, and there the denser swamps 
of boxberry and blueberry ; there the shrub -oak 
patches and the bayberries, there the maples 
and the birches and the pines. What other 
dyes are to be comj^ared to these? They were 
warmer colors than I had associated with the 
New England coast. 

After threading a swamp full of boxberry, 
and climbing several hills covered with shrub - 
oaks, without a path, where shipwrecked men 
would be in danger of perishing in the night, 
we came down upon the eastern extremity of the 
four planks which run the whole length of Pro- 
vincetown street. This, which is the last town 
on the Cape, lies mainly in one street along the 
curving: beach frontino^ the southeast. The 
sand-hills, covered with shrubbery and inter- 



THE SEA AND THE DESERT 235 

posed with swamps and ponds, rise immediately 
behind it in the form of a crescent, which is 
from half a mile to a mile or more wide in the 
middle, and beyond these is the desert, which is 
the greater part of its territory, stretching to 
the sea on the east and west and north. The 
town is compactly built in the narrow space, 
from ten to fifty rods deep, between the harbor 
and the sand-hills, and contained at that time 
about twenty-six hundred inhabitants. The 
houses, in which a more modern and pretending 
style has at length prevailed over the fisher- 
man's hut, stand on the inner or plank side of 
the street, and the fish and store houses, with 
the picturesque-looking windmills of the Salt- 
works, on the water side. The narrow portion 
of the beach between, forming the street, about 
eighteen feet wide, the only one where one car- 
riage could pass another, if there was more than 
one carriage in the town, looked much "heav- 
ier " than any portion of the beach or the desert 
which we had walked on, it being above the 
reach of the highest tide, and the sand being 
kept loose by the occasional passage of a trav- 
eler. We learned that the four planks on which 
we were walking had been bought by the town's 
share of the Surplus Revenue, the disposition 
of which was a bone of contention between the 
inhabitants, till they wisfely resolved thus to put 



236 CAPE COD 

it under foot. Yet some, it was said, were so 
provoked because they did not receive their 
particular share in money, that they persisted 
in walking in the sand a long time after the 
sidewalk was built. This is the only instance 
which I happen to know in which the surplus 
revenue proved a blessing to any town. A sur- 
plus revenue of dollars from the treasury to 
stem the greater evil of a surplus revenue of 
sand from the ocean. They expected to make 
a hard road by the time these planks were worn 
out. Indeed, they have already done so since 
we were there, and have almost forgotten their 
sandy baptism. 

As we passed along we observed the inhabi- 
tants engaged in curing either fish or the coarse 
salt hay which they had brought home and 
spread on the beach before their doors, looking 
as yellow as if they had raked it out of the sea. 
The front-yard plots appeared like what indeed 
they were, portions of the beach fenced in, with 
beach-grass growing in them, as if they were 
sometimes covered by the tide. You might still 
pick up shells and pebbles there. There were a 
few trees among the houses, especially silver 
abeles, willows, and balm-of-Gileads ; and one 
man showed me a young oak which he had 
transplanted from behind the town, thinking it 
an apple-tree. But every man to his trade. 



THE SEA AND THE DESERT 237 

Though he had little woodcraft, he was not the 
less weatherwise, and gave us one piece of in- 
formation, viz., he had observed that when a 
thunder- cloud came up with a flood -tide it did 
not rain. This was the most completely mari- 
time town that we were ever in. It was merely, 
a good harbor, surrounded by land, dry if not 
firm, — an inhabited beach, whereon fishermen 
cured and stored their fish, without any back 
country. When ashore the inhabitants still 
walk on planks. A few small patches have been 
reclaimed from the swamps, containing com- 
monly half a dozen square rods only each. We 
saw one which was fenced with four lengths of 
rail; also a fence made wholly of hogshead 
staves stuck in the ground. These, and such as 
these, were all the cultivated and cidtivable land 
in Provincetown. We were told that there 
were thirty or forty acres in all, but we did not 
discover a quarter part so much, and that was 
well dusted with sand, and looked as if the des- 
ert was claiming it. They are now turning 
some of their swamps into Cranberry Meadows 
on quite an extensive scale. 

Yet far from being out of the way, Province- 
town is directly in the way of the navigator, 
and he is lucky who does not run afoul of it in 
the dark. It is situated on one of the highways 
of commerce, and men from all parts of the 
globe touch there in the course of a year. 



238 CAPE COD 

The mackerel fleet had nearly all got in be- 
fore us, it being Saturday night, excepting that 
division which had stood down towards Chatham 
in the morning; and from a hill where we went 
to see the sun set in the Bay, we counted two 
hundred goodly looking schooners at anchor in 
the harbor at various distances from the shore, 
and more were yet coming round the Cape. As 
each came to anchor, it took in sail and swung 
round in the wind, and lowered its boat. They 
belonged chiefly to Wellfleet, Truro, and Cape 
Ann. This was that city of canvas which we 
had seen hull down in the horizon. Near at 
hand, and under bare poles, they were unex- 
pectedly black-looking vessels, fxiXaLvat vrjes. A 
fisherman told us that there were fifteen hun- 
dred vessels in the mackerel fleet, and that he 
had counted three "hundred and fifty in Province- 
town Harbor at one time. Being obliged to 
anchor at a considerable distance from the shore 
on account of the shallowness of the water, they 
made the impression of a larger fleet than the 
vessels at the wharves of a large city. As they 
had been manoeuvring out there all day seem- 
ingly for our entertainment, while we were walk- 
ing northwestward along the Atlantic, so now 
we found them flocking into Provincetown Har- 
bor at night, just as we arrived, as if to meet 
us, and exhibit themselves close at hand. Stand- 



THE SEA AND THE DESERT 239 

ing by Race Point and Long Point with various 
speed, they reminded me of fowls coming home 
to roost. 

These were genuine New England vessels. It 
is stated in the Journal of Moses Prince, a 
brother of the annalist, under date of 1721, at 
which time he visited Gloucester, that the first 
vessel of the class called schooner was built at 
Gloucester about eight years before, by Andrew 
Robinson; and late in the same century one 
Cotton Tufts gives us the tradition with some 
particulars, which he learned on a visit to the 
same place. According to the latter, Robinson 
having constructed a vessel which he masted 
and rigged in a peculiar manner, on her going 
off the stocks a by-stander cried out, " OA, how 
she scoons/^^ whereat Robinson replied, "^ 
schooner let her 6e.^" "From which time," 
says Tufts, "vessels thus masted and rigged 
have gone by the name of schooners; before 
which, vessels of this description were not known 
in Europe." ^ Yet I can hardly believe this, for 
a schooner has always seemed to me the typical 
vessel. 

According to C. E. Potter of Manchester, 
New Hampshire, the very word schooner is of 
New England origin, being from the Indian 

1 See Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. ix., 1st series, and vol. i., 4th 



240 CAPE COD 

schoon or scoot, meaning to rush, as Schoodic, 
from scoot and auke, a place where water rushes. 
N. B. Somebody of Gloucester was to read a 
paper on this matter before a genealogical soci- 
ety in Boston, March 3, 1859, according to the 
Boston Journal, q. v. 

Nearly all who come out must walk on the 
four planks which I have mentioned, so that 
you are pretty sure to meet all the inhabitants 
of Provincetown who come out in the course of 
a day, provided you keep out yourself. This 
evening the planks were crowded with mackerel 
fishers, to whom we gave and from whom we 
took the wall, as we returned to our hotel. This 
hotel was kept by a tailor, his shop on the one 
side of the door, his hotel on the other, and his 
day seemed to be divided between carving meat 
and carving broadcloth. 

The next morning, though it was still more 
cold and blustering than the day before, we took 
to the deserts again, for we spent our days 
wholly out of doors, in the sun when there was 
any, and in the wind which never failed. After 
threading the shrubby hill-country at the south- 
west end of the town, west of the Shank-Painter 
Swamp, whose expressive name — for we under- 
stood it at first as a landsman naturally would 
— gave it importance in our eyes, we crossed 
the sands to the shore south of Race Point and 



THE SEA AND THE DESERT 241 

three miles distant, and thence roamed round 
eastward through the desert to where we had 
left the sea the evening before. We traveled 
five or six miles after we got out there, on a curv- 
ing line, and might have gone nine or ten, over 
vast platters of pure sand, from the midst of 
which we could not see a particle of vegetation, 
excepting the distant thin fields of beach-grass, 
which crowned and made the ridges toward 
which the sand sloped upward on each side; 
— all the while in the face of a cutting wind as 
cold as January; indeed, we experienced no 
weather so cold as this for nearly two months 
afterward. This desert extends from the ex- 
tremity of the Cape, through Provincetown into 
Truro, and many a time as we were traversing 
it we were reminded of "Riley's Narrative " of 
his captivity in the sands of Arabia, notwith- 
standing the cold. Our eyes magnified the 
patches of beach-grass into cornfields, in the 
horizon, and we probably exaggerated the height 
of the ridges on account of the mirage. I was 
pleased to learn afterward, from Kalm's Travels 
in North America, that the inhabitants of the 
Lower St. Lawrence call this grass (^Calama- 
grostis arenaria)^ and also Sea-lyme grass {Ely- 
mus arenarlus\ seigle de mer; and he adds, "1 
have been assured that these plants grow in 
great plenty in Newfoundland, and on other 



242 CAPE COD 

North American shores ; the j)laces covered with 
them looking, at a distance, like cornfields; 
which might explain the passage in our north- 
ern accounts [he wrote in 1749] of the excellent 
wine land [ Vinland det goda, Translator], which 
mentions that they had found whole fields of 
wheat growing wild." 

The beach-grass is "two to four feet high, of 
a sea-green color," and it is said to be widely- 
diffused over the world. In the Hebrides it is 
used for mats, pack-saddles, bags, hats, etc. ; 
paper has been made of it at Dorchester in this 
State, and cattle eat it when tender. It has 
heads somewhat like rye, from six inches to a 
foot in length, and it is propagated both by 
roots and seeds. To express its love for sand, 
some botanists have called it Psamma arenaria, 
which is the Greek for sand, qualified by the 
Latin for sandy, — or sandy sand. As it is 
blown about by the wind, while it is held fast 
by its roots, it describes myriad circles in the 
sand as accurately as if they were made by com- 
passes. 

It was the dreariest scenery imaginable. The 
only animals which we saw on the sand at that 
time were sj)iders, which are to be found almost 
everywhere whether on snow or ice, water or 
sand, — and a venomous-looking, long, narrow 
worm, one of the myriapods, or thousand -legs. 



THE SEA AND THE DESERT 243 

We were surprised to see spider-holes in that 
flowing sand with an edge as firm as that of a 
stoned well. 

In June this sand was scored with the tracks 
of turtles both large and small, which had been 
out in the night, leading to and from the 
swamps. I was told by a terrm films who has a 
"farm" on the edge of the desert, and is fami- 
liar with the fame of Provincetown, that one 
man had caught twenty-five snapping-turtles 
there the previous spring. His own method of 
catching them was to put a toad on a mackerel- 
hook and cast it into a pond, tying the line to a 
stump or stake on shore. Invariably the turtle 
when hooked crawled up the line to the stump, 
and was found waiting there by his captor, how- 
ever long afterward. He also said that minks, 
.muskrats, foxes, coons, and wild mice were 
found there, but no squirrels. We heard of 
sea-turtles as large as a barrel being found on 
the beach and on East Harbor marsh, but 
whether they were native there, or had been lost 
out of some vessel, did not appear. Perhaps 
they were the Salt-water Terrapin, or else the 
Smooth Terrapin, found thus far north. Many 
toads were met with where there was nothing 
but sand and beach-grass. In Truro I had been 
surprised at the number of large light-colored 
toads everywhere hopping over the dry and 



244 CAPE COD 

sandy fields, their color corresponding to that 
of the sand. Snakes also are common on these 
pure sand beaches, and I have never been so 
much troubled by mosquitoes as in such locali- 
ties. At the same season strawberries grew 
there abundantly in the little hollows on the 
edge of the desert, standing amid the beach- 
grass in the sand, and the fruit of the shad-bush 
or Amelanchier, which the inhabitants call 
Josh-pears (some think from juicy?), is very 
abundant on the hills. I fell in with an oblig- 
ing man who conducted me to the best locality 
for strawberries. He said that he would not 
have shown me the place if he had not seen that 
I was a stranger, and could not anticipate him 
another year; I therefore feel bound in honor 
not to reveal it. When we came to a pond, he 
being the native did the honors and carried me 
over on his shoulders, like Sindbad. One good 
turn deserves another, and if he ever comes our 
way, I will do as much for him. 

In one place we saw numerous dead tops of 
trees projecting through the otherwise uninter- 
rupted desert, where, as we afterward learned, 
thirty or forty years before a flourishing forest 
had stood, and now, as the trees were laid bare 
from year to year, the inhabitants cut off their 
tops for fuel. 

We saw nobody that day outside of the town ; 



THE SEA AND THE DESERT 245 

it was too wintry for such as had seen the Back- 
side before, or for the greater number who never 
desire to see it, to venture out; and we saw 
hardly a track to show that any had ever crossed 
this desert. Yet I was told that some are al- 
ways out on the Back-side night and day in se- 
vere weather, looking for wrecks, in order that 
they may get the job of discharging the cargo, 
or the like, — and thus shipwrecked men are 
succored. But, generally speaking, the inhabi- 
tants rarely visit these sands. One who had 
lived in Provincetown thirty years told me that 
he had not been through to the north side within 
that time. Sometimes the natives themselves 
come near perishing by losing their way in 
snow-storms behind the town. 

The wind was not a Sirocco or Simoon, such 
as we associate with the desert, but a New Eng- 
land northeaster, — and we sought shelter in 
vain under the sand-hills, for it blew all about 
them, rounding them into cones, and was sure 
to find us out on whichever side we sat. From 
time to time we lay down and drank at little 
pools in the sand, filled with pure, fresh water, 
all that was left, probably, of a pond or swamp. 
The air was filled with dust like snow, and cut- 
ting sand which made the face tingle, and we 
saw what it must be to face it when the weather 
was drier, and, if possible, windier still, — to 



246 CAPE COD 

face a migrating sand-bar in the air, which has 
picked up its duds and is off, — to be whipped 
with a cat, not o' nine-tails, but of a myriad of 
tails, and each one a sting to it. A Mr. Whit- 
man, a former minister of Wellfleet, used to 
write to his inland friends that the blowing sand 
scratched the windows so that he was obliged 
to have one new pane set every week, that he 
might see out. 

On the edge of the shrubby woods the sand 
had the appearance of an inundation which was 
overwhelming them, terminating in an abrupt 
bank many feet higher than the surface on 
which they stood, and having partially buried 
the outside trees. The moving sand-hills of 
England, called Dunes or Downs, to which 
these have been likened, are either formed of 
sand cast up by the sea, or of sand taken from 
the land itself in the first place by the wind, 
and driven still farther inward. It is here a 
tide of sand impelled by waves and wind, slowly 
flowing from the sea toward the town. The 
northeast winds are said to be the strongest, but 
the northwest to move most sand, because they 
are the driest. On the shore of the Bay of Bis- 
cay, many villages were formerly destroyed in 
this way. Some of the ridges of beach-grass 
which we saw were planted by government many 
years ago, to preserve the harbor of Province- 



THE SEA AND THE DESERT 247 

town and the extremity of the Cape. I talked 
with some who had been employed in the plant- 
ing. In the "Description of the Eastern 
Coast," which I have already referred to, it is 
said: "Beach-grass during the spring and sum- 
mer grows about two feet and a half. If sur- 
rounded by naked beach, the storms of autumn 
and winter heap up the sand on all sides, and 
cause it to rise nearly to the top of the plant. 
In the ensuing spring the grass sprouts anew; 
is again covered with sand in the winter ; and 
thus a hill or ridge continues to ascend as long 
as there is a sufficient base to support it, or till 
the circumscribing sand, being also covered 
with beach-grass, will no longer yield to the 
force of the winds." Sand-hills formed in this 
way are sometimes one hundred feet high and of 
every variety of form, like snow-drifts, or Arab 
tents, and are continually shifting. The grass 
roots itself very firmly. When I endeavored 
to pull it up, it usually broke off ten inches or 
a foot below the surface, at what had been the 
surface the year before, as appeared by the 
numerous offshoots there, it being a straight, 
hard, round shoot, showing by its length how 
much the sand had accumulated the last year; 
and sometimes the dead stubs of a previous 
season were pulled up with it from still deeper 
in the sand, with their own more decayed shoot 



248 CAPE COD 

attached, — so that the age of a sand-hill, and 
its rate of increase for several years, are pretty 
accurately recorded in this way. 

Old Gerard, the English herbalist, says, p. 
1250; "I find mention in Stowe's Chronicle, in 
Anno 1555, of a certain pulse or pease, as they 
term it, wherewith the poor people at that time, 
there being a great dearth, were miraculously 
helped; he thus mentions it. In the month of 
AugTist (saith he), in Suffolke, at a place by 
the sea side all of hard stone and pibble, called 
in those parts a shelf, lying between the towns 
of Orford and Aldborough, where neither grew 
grass nor any earth was ever seen ; it chanced 
in this barren place suddenly to spring up with- 
out any tillage or sowing, great abundance of 
peason, whereof the poor gathered (as men 
judged) above one hundred quarters, yet re- 
mained some ripe and some blossoming, as many 
as ever there were before; to the which place 
rode the Bishop of Norwich and the Lord 
Willoughby, ^vith others in great number, who 
found nothing but hard, rocky stone the space 
of three yards under the roots of these peason, 
which roots were great and long, and very 
sweet." He tells us also that Gesner learned 
from Dr. Cajus that there were enough there to 
supply thousands of men. He goes on to say 
that "they without doubt grew there many 



THE SEA AND THE DESERT 249 

years before, but were not observed till hunger 
made them take notice of them, and quickened 
their invention, which commonly in our people 
is very dull, especially in finding out food of 
this nature. My worshipful friend Dr. Argent 
hath told me that many years ago he was in this 
place, and caused his man to pull among the 
beach with his hands, and follow the roots so 
long until he got some equal in length unto his 
height, yet could come to no ends of them." 
Gerard never saw them, and is not certain what 
kind they were. 

In Dwight's Travels in New England it is 
stated that the inhabitants of Truro were for- 
merly regularly warned under the authority of 
law in the month of April yearly, to plant 
beach-grass, as elsewhere they are warned to re- 
pair the highways. They dug up the grass in 
bunches, which were afterward divided into sev- 
eral smaller ones, and set about three feet apart, 
in rows, so arranged as to break joints and ob- 
struct the passage of the wind. It spread itself 
rapidly, the weight of the seeds when ripe bend- 
ing the heads of the grass, and so dropping di- 
rectly by its side and vegetating there. In this 
way, for instance, they built up again that part 
of the Cape between Truro and Provincetown 
where the sea broke over in the last century. 
They have now a public road near there, made 



250 CAPE COD 

by laying sods, which were full of roots, bottom 
upward and close together on the sand, double 
in the middle of the track, then spreading brush 
evenly over the sand on each side for half a 
dozen feet, planting beach-grass on the banks 
in regular rows, as above described, and sticking 
a fence of brush against the hollows. 

The attention of the general government was 
first attracted to the danger which threatened 
Cape Cod Harbor from the inroads of the sand, 
about thirty years ago, and commissioners were 
at that time appointed by Massachusetts to ex- 
amine the premises. They reported in June, 
1825, that, owing to "the trees and brush hav- 
ing been cut down, and the beach -grass de- 
stroyed on the seaward side of the Cape, oppo- 
site the Harbor," the original surface of the 
ground had been broken up and removed by 
the wind toward the Harbor, — during the pre- 
vious fourteen years, — over an extent of "one 
half a mile in breadth, and about four and a 
half miles in length." — "The space where a 
few years since were some of the highest lands 
on the Cape, covered with trees and bushes," 
presenting "an extensive waste of undulating 
sand;" — and that, during the previous twelve 
months, the sand "had approached the Harbor 
an average distance of fifty rods, for an extent 
of four and a half miles!" and unless some 



THE SEA AND THE DESERT 25l 

measures were adopted to check its progress, it 
would in a few years destroy both the harbor 
and the town. They therefore recommended 
that beach-grass be set out on a curving line 
over a space ten rods wide and four and a half 
miles long, and that cattle, horses, and sheep be 
prohibited from going abroad, and the inhabi- 
tants from cutting the brush. 

I was told that about thirty thousand dollars 
in all had been appropriated to this object, 
though it was complained that a great part of it 
was spent foolishly, as the public money is wont 
to be. Some say that while the government is 
planting beach-grass behind the town for the 
protection of the harbor, the inhabitants are 
rolling the sand into the harbor in wheelbarrows, 
in order to make house-lots. The Patent-Office 
has recently imj^orted the seed of this grass 
from Holland, and distributed it over the coun- 
try, but probably we have as much as the Hol- 
landers. 

Thus Cape Cod is anchored to the heavens, 
as it were, by a myriad little cables of beach- 
grass, and, if they should fail, would become a 
total wreck, and erelong go to the bottom. 
Formerly, the cows were permitted to go at 
large, and they ate many strands of the cable 
by which the Cape is moored, and well-nigh set 
it adrift, as the bull did the boat which was 



252 CAPE COD 

moored with a grass rope ; but now they are not 
permitted to wander. 

A portion of Truro which has considerable 
taxable property on it has lately been added to 
Provincetown, and I was told by a Truro man 
that his townsmen talked of petitioning the legis- 
lature to set off the next mile of their territory 
also to Provincetown, in order that she might 
have her share of the lean as well as the fat, 
and take care of the road through it; for its 
whole value is literally to hold the Cape to- 
gether, and even this it has not always done. 
But Provincetown strenuously declines the gift. 

The wind blowed so hard from the northeast, 
that, cold as it was, we resolved to see the break- 
ers on the Atlantic side, whose din we had 
heard all the morning; so we kept on eastward 
through the desert, till we struck the shore 
again northeast of Provincetown, and exposed 
ourselves to the full force of the piercing blast. 
There are extensive shoals there over which the 
sea broke with great force. For half a mile 
from the shore it was one mass of white break- 
ers, which, with the wind, made such a din that 
we could hardly hear ourselves speak. Of this 
part of the coast it is said : '' A northeast storm, 
the most violent and fatal to seamen, as it is 
frequently accompanied with snow, blows di- 
rectly on the land : a strong current sets along 



THE SEA AND THE DESERT 253 

the shore : add to which that ships, during the 
operation of such a storm, endeavor to work 
northward, that they may get into the bay. 
Should they be unable to weather Race Point, 
the wind drives them on the shore, and a ship- 
wreck is inevitable. Accordingly, the strand is 
everywhere covered with the fragments of ves- 
sels." But since the Highland Light was 
erected, this part of the coast is less dangerous, 
and it is said that more shipwrecks occur south 
of that light, where they were scarcely known 
before. 

This was the stormiest sea that we witnessed, 
— more tumultuous, my companion affirmed, 
than the rapids of Niagara, and, of course, on 
a far greater scale. It was the ocean in a gale, 
a clear, cold day, with only one sail in sight, 
which labored much, as if it were anxiously 
seeking a harbor. It was high tide when we 
reached the shore, and in one i^lace, for a con- 
siderable distance, each wave dashed up so high 
that it was difficult to pass between it and the 
bank. Further south, where the bank was 
higher, it would have been dangerous to attempt 
it. A native of the Cape has told me, that 
many years ago, three boys, his playmates, hav- 
ing gone to this beach in Wellfleet to visit a 
wreck, when the sea receded ran down to the 
wreck, and when it came in ran before it to the 



254 CAPE COD 

bank, but the sea following fast at their heels, 
caused the bank to cave and bury them alive. 
It was the roaring sea, OdXaao-a yxfUf^cra^ — 

*HT6v€S fioScocTLu, €pevyofj.€i>r]S a\hs e|a). 

And the summits of the hank 
Around resound, the sea being vomited forth. 

As we stood looking on this scene we were 
gradually convinced that fishing here and in a 
pond were not, in all resj)ects, the same, and 
that he who waits for fair weather and a calm 
sea may never see the glancing skin of a mack- 
erel, and get no nearer to a cod than the wooden 
emblem in the State House. 

Having lingered on the shore till we were 
well-nigh chilled to death by the wind, and were 
ready to take shelter in a Charity-house, we 
turned our weather-beaten faces toward Pro- 
vincetown and the Bay again, having now more 
than doubled the Cape. 



PROVINCETOWN 

Early the next morning I walked into a fish- 
house near our hotel, where three or four men 
were engaged in trundling out the pickled fish 
on barrows, and spreading them to dry. They 
told me that a vessel had lately come in from 
the Banks with forty-four thousand cod-fish. 
Timothy Dwight says that, just before he ar- 
rived at Provincetown, "a schooner came in 
from the Great Bank with fifty-six thousand 
fish, almost one thousand five hundred quintals, 
taken in a single voyage ; the main deck being, 
on her return, eight inches under water in calm 
weather." The cod in this fish -house, just out 
of the pickle, lay packed several feet deep, and 
three or four men stood on them in cowhide 
boots, pitching them on to the barrows with an 
instrument which had a single iron point. One 
young man, who chewed tobacco, spat on the 
fish repeatedly. Well, sir, thought I, when 
that older man sees you he will speak to you. 
But presently I saw the older man do the same 
thing. It reminded me of the figs of Smyrna. 



256 CAPE COD 

"How long does it take to cure these fish?" I 
asked. 

"Two good drying daj^s, sir," was the an- 
swer. 

I walked across the street again into the hotel 
to breakfast, and mine host inquired if I would 
take "hashed fish or beans." I took beans, 
though they never were a favorite dish of mine. 
I found next summer that this was still the only 
alternative proposed here, and the landlord was 
still ringing the changes on these two words. 
In the former dish there was a remarkable pro- 
portion of fish. As you travel inland the potato 
predominates. It chanced that I did not taste 
fresh fish of any kind on the Cape, and I was 
assured that they were not so much used there 
as in the country. That is where they are 
cured, and where, sometimes, travelers are 
cured of eating them. No fresh meat was 
slaughtered in Provincetown, but the little that 
was used at the public houses was brought from 
Boston by the steamer. 

A great many of the houses here were sur- 
rounded by fish -flakes close up to the sills on all 
sides, with only a narrow passage two or three 
feet wide, to the front door ; so that instead of 
looking out into a flower or grass plot, you 
looked on to so many square rods of cod turned 
wrong side outwards. These parterres were said 



PROVINCETOWN 257 

to be least like a flower-garden in a good dry- 
ing day in midsummer. There were flakes of 
every age and pattern, and some so rusty and 
overgrown with lichens that they looked as if 
they might have served the founders of the fish- 
ery here. Some had broken down under the 
weight of successive harvests. The principal 
employment of the inhabitants at this time 
seemed to be to trundle out their fish and spread 
them in the morning, and bring them in at 
night. I saw how many a loafer who chanced 
to be out early enough, got a job at wheeling 
out the fish of his neighbor who was anxious to 
improve the whole of a fair day. Now then I 
knew where salt fish were caught. They were 
everywhere lying on their backs, their collar- 
bones standing out like the lapels of a man-o'- 
war-man's jacket, and inviting all things to 
come and rest in their bosoms ; and all things, 
with a few exceptions, accepted the invitation. 
I think, by the way, that if you should wrap a 
large salt fish round a small boy, he would have 
a coat of such a fashion as I have seen many a 
one wear to muster. Salt fish were stacked up 
on the wharves, looking like corded wood, maple 
and yellow birch with the bark left on. I mis- 
took them for this at first, and such in one sense 
they were, — fuel to maintain our vital fires, — 
an eastern wood which grew on the Grand 



258 CAPE COD 

Banks. Some were stacked in the form of huge 
flower-pots, being laid in small circles with the 
tails outwards, each circle successively larger 
than the preceding until the pile was three or 
four feet high, when the circles rapidly dimin- 
ished, so as to form a conical roof. On the 
shores of New Brunswick this is covered with 
birch-bark, and stones are placed upon it, and, 
being thus rendered impervious to the rain, it is 
left to season before being packed for exporta- 
tion. 

It is rumored that in the fall the cows here 
are sometimes fed on cod's heads! The godlike 
part of the cod, which, like the human head, is 
curiously and wonderfully made, forsooth has 
but little less brain in it, — coming to such an 
end ! to be craunched by cows ! I felt my own 
skull crack from sympathy. What if the heads 
of men were to be cut off to feed the cows of a 
superior order of beings who inhabit the islands 
in the ether? Away goes your fine brain, the 
house of thought and instinct, to swell the cud 
of a ruminant animal! — However, an inhabi- 
tant assured me that they did not make a prac- 
tice of feeding cows on cod's heads; the cows 
merely would eat them sometimes, but I might 
live there all my days and never see it done. 
A <Jow wanting salt would also sometimes lick 
out all the soft part of a cod on the flakes. 



PROVINCETOWN 259 

This he would have me believe was the founda- 
tion of this fish-story. 

It has been a constant traveler's tale and per- 
haps slander, now for thousands of years, the 
Latins and Greeks have repeated it, that this or 
that nation feeds its cattle, or horses, or sheep, 
on fish, as may be seen in ^lian and Pliny, but 
in the Journal of Nearchus, who was Alexan- 
der's admiral, and made a voyage from the 
Indus to the Euphrates three hundred and 
twenty-six years before Christ, it is said that the 
inhabitants of a portion of the intermediate 
coast, whom he called Ichthyophagi or Fish- 
eaters, not only ate fishes raw and also dried 
and pounded in a whale's vertebra for a mortar 
and made into a paste, but gave them to their 
cattle, there being no grass on the coast; and 
several modern travelers, — Braybosa, Niebuhr, 
and others make the same report. Therefore in 
balancing the evidence I am still in doubt about 
the Provincetown cows. As for other domestic 
animals. Captain King, in his continuation of 
Captain Cook's Journal in 1779, says of the 
dogs of Kamtschatka, " Their food in the winter 
consists entirely of the head, entrails, and back- 
bones of salmon, which are put aside and dried 
for that purpose ; and with this diet they are fed 
but sparingly."^ 

1 Cook's Journal, vol. vii. p. 315. 



260 CAPE COD 

As we are treating of fishy matters, let me 
insert what Pliny says, — that " the command- 
ers of the fleets of Alexander the Great have 
related that the Gedrosi, who dwell on the 
banks of the river Arabis, are in the habit of 
making the doors of their houses with the jaw- 
bones of fishes, and raftering the roofs with 
their bones." Strabo tells the same of the 
Ichthyophagi. "Hardouin remarks, that the 
Basques of his day were in the habit of fencing 
their gardens with the ribs of the whale, which 
sometimes exceeded twenty feet in length; and 
Cuvier says, that at the present time the jaw« 
bone of the whale is used in Norway for the 
purpose of making beams or posts for build- 
ings." ^ Herodotus says the inhabitants on Lake 
Prasias in Thrace (living on piles), "give fish 
for fodder to their horses and beasts of burden." 

Provincetown was apparently what is called a 
flourishing town. Some of the inhabitants asked 
me if I did not think that they appeared to be 
well off generally. I said that I did, and asked 
how many there were in the almshouse. " Oh, 
only one or two, infirm or idiotic," answered 
they. The outward aspect of the houses and 
shops frequently suggested a poverty which 
their interior comfort and even richness dis- 
proved. You might meet a lady daintily 

1 Bohn's ed. trans, of Pliny, vol. ii. p. 361. 



PROVINCETOWN 261 

dressed in the Sabbath morning, wading in 
among the sand-hills, from church, where there 
appeared no house fit to receive her, yet no 
doubt the interior of the house answered to the 
exterior of the lady. As for the interior of the 
inhabitants I am still in the dark about it. I 
had a little intercourse with some whom I met 
in the street, and was often agreeably disap- 
pointed by discovering the intelligence of rough, 
and what would be considered unpromising, 
specimens. Nay, I ventured to call on one citi- 
zen the next summer, by special invitation. I 
found him sitting in his front doorway, that 
Sabbath evening, prepared for me to come in 
unto him; but unfortunately for his reputation 
for keeping open house, there was stretched 
across his gateway a circular cobweb of the 
largest kind and quite entire. This looked so 
ominous that I actually turned aside and went 
in the back way. 

This Monday morning was beautifully mild 
and calm, both on land and water, promising us 
a smooth passage across the Bay, and the fisher- 
men feared that it would not be so good a dry- 
ing day as the cold and windy one which pre- 
ceded it. There could hardly have been a 
greater contrast. This was the first of the In- 
dian Summer days, though at a late hour in the 
morning we found the wells in the sand behind 



262 CAPE COD 

the town still covered with ice, which had 
formed in the night. What with wind and sun 
my most prominent feature fairly cast its slough. 
But I assure you it will take more than two 
good drying days to cure me of rambling. Af- 
ter making an excursion among the hills in the 
neighborhood of the Shank-Painter Swamp, 
and getting a little work done in its line, we 
took our seat upon the highest sand-hill over- 
looking the town, in mid-air, on a long plank 
stretched across between two hillocks of sand, 
where some boys were endeavoring in vain to 
fly their kite ; and there we remained the rest 
of that forenoon looking out over the placid 
harbor, and watching for the first appearance 
of the steamer from Wellfleet, that we might be 
in readiness to go on board when we heard the 
whistle off Long Point. 

We got what we could out of the boys in the 
mean while. Provincetown boys are of course 
all sailors and have sailors' eyes. When we 
were at the Highland Light the last summer, 
seven or eight miles from Provincetown Har- 
bor, and wished to know one Sunday morning 
if the Olata, a well-known yacht, had got in 
from Boston, so that we could return in her, a 
Provincetown boy about ten years old, who 
chanced to be at the table, remarked that she 
had. I asked him how he knew. "I just saw 



PROVINCETOWN 263 

her come in," said he. When I expressed sur- 
prise that he could distinguish her from other 
vessels so far, he said that there were not so 
many of those two-topsail schooners about but 
that he could tell her. Palfrey said, in his ora- 
tion at Barnstable, " The duck does not take to 
the water with a surer instinct than the Barn- 
stable boy. [He might have said the Cape Cod 
boy as well.] He leaps from his leading-strings 
into the shrouds. It is but a bound from the 
mother's lap to the masthead. He boxes the 
compass in his infant soliloquies. He can hand, 
reef, and steer by the time he flies a kite.'* 

This was the very day one would have chosen 
to sit upon a hill overlooking sea and land, and 
muse there. The mackerel fleet was rapidly 
taking its dej)arture, one schooner after another, 
and standing round the Cape, like fowls leav- 
ing their roosts in the morning to disperse them- 
selves in distant fields. The turtle-like sheds 
of the salt-works were crowded into every nook 
in the hills, immediately behind the town, and 
their now idle wind-mills lined the shore. It 
was worth the while to see by what coarse and 
'simple chemistry this almost necessary of life is 
obtained, with the sun for journeyman, and a 
single apprentice to do the chores for a large 
establishment. It is a sort of tropical labor, 
pursued too in the sunniest season ; more inter- 



264 CAPE COD 

esting than gold or diamond-washing, which, I 
fancy, it somewhat resembles at a distance. In 
the production of the necessaries of life Nature 
is ready enough to assist man. So at the pot- 
ash works which I have seen at Hull, where 
they burn the stems of the kelp and boil the 
ashes. Verily, chemistry is not a splitting of 
hairs when you have got half a dozen raw Irish 
men in the laboratory. It is said, that owing 
to the reflection of the sun from the sand-hills, 
and there being absolutely no fresh water emp- 
tying into the harbor, the same number of su- 
perficial feet yields more salt here than in any 
other part of the country. A little rain is con- 
sidered necessary to clear the air, and make 
salt fast and good, for as paint does not dry, so 
water does not evaporate, in dog-day weather. 
But they were now, as elsewhere on the Cape, 
breaking up their salt-works and selling them 
for lumber. 

From that elevation we could overlook the 
operations of the inhabitants almost as com- 
pletely as if the roofs had been taken off. 
They were busily covering the wicker-work 
flakes about their houses with salted fish, and 
we now saw that the back yards were improved 
for this purpose as much as the front; where 
one man's fish ended another's began. In al- 
most every yard we detected some little build-^ 



PROVINCETOWN 265 

ing from which these treasures were being trun- 
dled forth and systematically spread, and we 
saw that there was an art as well as a knack 
even in spreading fish, and that a division of 
labor was profitably practiced. One man was 
withdrawing his fishes a few inches beyond the 
nose of his neighbor's cow which had stretched 
her neck over a paling to get at them. It 
seemed a quite domestic employment, like dry- 
ing clothes, and indeed in some parts of the 
county the women take part in it. 

I noticed in several places on the Cape a sort 
of clothes-^ate. They spread brush on the 
ground, and fence it round, and then lay their 
clothes on it, to keep them from the sand. This 
is a Cape Cod clothes-yard. 

The sand is the great enemy here. The tops 
of some of the hills were inclosed and a board 
put up forbidding all persons entering the in- 
closure, lest their feet should disturb the sand, 
and set it a-blowing or a-sliding. The inhabi- 
tants are obliged to get leave from the authori- 
ties to cut wood behind the town for fish-flakes, 
bean-poles, pea-brush, and the like, though, as 
we were told, they may transplant trees from 
one part of the township to another without 
leave. The sand drifts like snow, and some- 
times the lower story of a house is concealed by 
it, though it is kept off by a wall. The houses 



266 CAPE COD 

were formerly built on piles, in order that the 
driving sand might pass under them. We saw 
a few old ones here still standing on their piles, 
but they were boarded up now, being protected 
by their younger neighbors. There was a school- 
house, just under the hill on which we sat, filled 
with sand up to the tops of the desks, and of 
course the master and scholars had fled. Per- 
haps they had imprudently left the windows 
open one day, or neglected to mend a broken 
pane. Yet in one place was advertised "Fine 
sand for sale here," — I could hardly believe 
my eyes, — probably some of the street sifted, 
— a good instance of the fact that a man confers 
a value on the most worthless thing by mixing 
himself with it, according to which rule we 
must have conferred a value on the whole back- 
side of Cape Cod; — but I thought that if they 
could have advertised "Fat Soil," or perhaps 
"Fine sand got rid of," ay, and "Shoes emptied 
here," it would have been more alluring. As we 
looked down on the town, I thought that I saw 
one man, who probably lived beyond the ex- 
tremity of the planking, steering and tacking 
for it in a sort of snow-shoes, but I may have 
been mistaken. In some pictures of Province- 
town the persons of the inhabitants are not 
drawn below the ankles, so much being supposed 
to be buried in the sand. Nevertheless, natives 



PROVINCETOWN 267 

of Provincetown assured me that they could 
walk in the middle of the road without trouble 
even in slippers, for they had learned how to 
put their feet down and lift them up without 
taking in any sand. One man said that he 
should be surprised if he found half a dozen 
grains of sand in his pumps at night, and 
stated, moreover, that the young ladies had a 
dexterous way of emptying their shoes at each 
step, which it would take a stranger a long time 
to learn. The tires of the stage- wheels were 
about five inches wide ; and the wagon-tires gen- 
erally on the Cape are an inch or two wider, as 
the sand is an inch or two deeper than else- 
where. I saw a baby's wagon with tires six 
inches wide to keep it near the surface. The 
more tired the wheels, the less tired the horses. 
Yet all the time that we were in Provincetown, 
which was two days and nights, we saw only one 
horse and cart, and they were conveying a coffin. 
They did not try suCh experiments there on 
common occasions. The next summer I saw 
only the two-wheeled horse-cart which conveyed 
me thirty rods into the harbor on my way to the 
steamer. Yet we read that there were two 
horses and two yoke of oxen here in 1791, and 
we were told that there were several more when 
we were there, beside the stage team. In Bar- 
ber's Historical Collections, it is said, "so 



268 CAPE COD 

rarely are wheel-carriages seen in the place that 
they are a matter of some curiosity to the 
younger part of the community. A lad who 
understood navigating the ocean much better 
than land travel, on seeing a man driving a 
wagon in the street, expressed his surprise at 
his being able to drive so straight without the 
assistance of a rudder." There was no rattle of 
carts, and there would have been no rattle if 
there had been any carts. Some saddle horses 
that passed the hotel in the evening merely 
made the sand fly with a rustling sound like a 
writer sanding his paper copiously, but there 
was no sound of their tread. No doubt there 
are more horses and carts there at present. A 
sleigh is never seen, or at least is a great novelty 
on the Cape, the snow being either absorbed by 
the sand or blown into drifts. 

Nevertheless, the inhabitants of the Cape 
generally do not complain of their "soil," but 
will tell you that it is good enough for them to 
dry their fish on. 

Notwithstanding all this sand, we counted 
three meeting-houses, and four school-houses 
nearly as large, on this street, though some had 
a tight board fence about them to preserve the 
plot within level and hard. Similar fences, 
even within a foot of many of the houses, gave 
the town a less cheerful and hospitable appear- 



PROVINCETOWN 269 

ance than it would otherwise have had. They 
told us that, on the whole, the sand had made 
no progress for the last ten years, the cows be- 
ing no longer permitted to go at large, and every 
means being taken to stop the sandy tide. 

In 1727 Provincetown was "invested with 
peculiar privileges," for its encouragement. 
Once or twice it was nearly abandoned; but 
now lots on the street fetch a high price, though 
titles to them were first obtained by possession 
and improvement, and they are still transferred 
by quit-claim deeds merely, the township being 
the property of the State. But though lots 
were so valuable on the street, you might in 
many places throw a stone over them to where a 
man could still obtain land or sand by squatting 
on or improving it. 

Stones are very rare on the Cape. I saw a 
very few small stones used for pavements and 
for bank walls, in one or two places in my walk, 
but they are so scarce, that, as I was informed, 
vessels have been forbidden to take them from 
the beach for ballast, and therefore their crews 
used to land at night and steal them. I did not 
hear of a rod of regular stone wall below Or- 
leans. Yet I saw one man underpinning a new 
house in Eastham with some "rocks," as he 
called them, which he said a neighbor had col- 
lected with great pains in the course of years, 



270 CAPE COD 

and finally made over to him. This I thought 
was a gift worthy of being recorded, — equal to 
a transfer of California "rocks," almost. An- 
other man who was assisting him, and who 
seemed to be a close observer of nature, hinted 
to me the locality of a rock in that neighbor- 
hood which was "forty -two paces in circumfer- 
ence and fifteen feet high," for he saw that I 
was a stranger, and, probably, would not carry 
it off. Yet I suspect that the locality of the few 
large rocks on the forearm of the Cape is well 
known to the inhabitants generally. I even met 
with one man who had got a smattering of min- 
eralogy, but where he picked it up I could not 
guess. I thought that he would meet with some 
interesting geological nuts for him to crack, if 
he should ever visit the mainland, — Cohasset 
or Marblehead, for instance. 

The well stones at the Highland Light were 
brought from Hingham, but the wells and cel- 
lars of the Cape are generally built of brick, 
which also are imported. The cellars, as well 
as the wells, are made in a circular form, to 
prevent the sand from pressing in the wall. 
The former are only from nine to twelve feet in 
diameter, and are said to be very cheap, since a 
single tier of brick will suffice for a cellar of 
even larger dimensions. Of course, if you live 
in the sand, you will not require a large cellar 



PROVINCETOWN 271 

to hold your roots. In Provincetown, when 
formerly they suffered the sand to drive under 
their houses, obliterating all rudiment of a 
cellar, they did not raise a vegetable to put into 
one. One farmer in Wellfleet, who raised fifty 
bushels of potatoes, showed me his cellar under 
a corner of his house, not more than nine feet 
in diameter, looking like a cistern ; but he had 
another of the same size under his barn. 

You need dig only a few feet almost any- 
where near the shore of the Cape to find fresh 
water. But that which we tasted was invariably 
poor, though the inhabitants called it good, as if 
they were comparing it with salt water. In 
the account of Truro, it is said, "Wells dug near 
the shore are dry at low water, or rather at 
what is called young flood, but are replenished 
with the flowing of the tide," — the salt water, 
which is lowest in the sand, apparently forcing 
the fresh up. When you express your surprise 
at the greenness of a Provincetown garden on 
the beach, in a dry season, they will sometimes 
tell you that the tide forces the moisture up to 
them. It is an interesting fact that low sand- 
bars in the midst of the ocean, perhaps even 
those which are laid bare only at low tide, are 
reservoirs of fresh water, at which the thirsty 
mariner can supply himself. They appear, like 
huge sponges, to hold the rain and dew which 



272 CAPE COD 

fall on them, and which, by capillary attraction, 
are prevented from mingling with the surround- 
ing brine. 

The Harbor of Provincetown — which, as 
well as the greater part of the Bay, and a wide 
expanse of ocean, we overlooked from our perch 
— is deservedly famous. It opens to the south, 
is free from rocks, and is never frozen over. It 
is said that the only ice seen in it drifts in 
sometimes from Barnstable or Plymouth. 
Dwight remarks that "the storms which prevail 
on the American coast generally come from the 
east ; and there is no other harbor on a windward 
shore within two hundred miles." J. D. Gra- 
ham, who has made a very minute and thorough 
survey of this harbor and the adjacent waters, 
states that "its capacity, depth of water, excel- 
lent anchorage, and the complete shelter it 
affords from all winds, combine to render it one 
of the most valuable ship harbors on our coast." 
It is the harbor of the Cape and of the fisher- 
men of Massachusetts generally. It was known 
to navigators several years at least before the 
settlement of Plymouth. In Captain John 
Smith's map of New England, dated 1614, it 
bears the name of Milford Haven, and Massa- 
chusetts Bay that of Stuard's Bay. His High- 
ness Prince Charles changed the name of Cape 
Cod to Cape James ; but even princes have not 



PROVINCETOWN 273 

always power to change a name for the worse, 
and, as Cotton Mather said, Cape Cod is "a 
name which I suppose it will never lose till 
shoals of codfish be seen swimming on its high- 
est hills." 

Many an early voyager was unexpectedly 
caught by this hook, and found himself em- 
bayed. On successive maps. Cape Cod appears 
sprinkled over with French, Dutch, and English 
names, as it made part of New France, New 
Holland, and New England. On one map 
Provincetown Harbor is called "Fuic (bownet?) 
Bay," Barnstable Bay "Staten Bay,"' and the 
sea north of it "Mare del Noort," or the North 
Sea. On another, the extremity of the Cape is 
called "Staten Hoeck," or the States Hook. 
On another, by Young, this has Noord Zee, 
Staten hoeck, or Hit hoeck, but the copy at 
Cambridge has no date ; the whole Cape is called 
"Niew HoUant" (after Hudson); and on an- 
other still, the shore between Eace Point and 
Wood End appears to be called "Bevechier." 
In Champlain's admirable Map of New France, 
including the oldest recognizable map of what is 
now the New England coast with which I am 
acquainted. Cape Cod is called C Blan (i. e.. 
Cape White), from the color of its sands, and 
Massachusetts Bay is Baye Blanche. It was 
visited by De Monts and Champlain in 1605, 



274 CAPE COD 

and the next year was further explored by Poi- 
trincourt and Champlain. The latter has given 
a particular account of these explorations in his 
"Voyages," together with separate charts and 
soundings of two of its harbors, — Malle 
Barre^ the Bad Bar (Nauset Harbor?), a name 
now applied to what the French called Cap 
Baturier^ — and Port Fortune^ apparently 
Chatham Harbor. Both these names are copied 
on the map of "Novi Belgii," in Ogilby's 
America. He also describes minutely the man- 
ners and customs of the savages, and represents 
by a plate the savages surprising the French 
and killing five or six of them. The French 
afterward killed some of the natives, and 
wished, by way of revenge, to carry off some 
and make them grind in their hand-mill at Port 
Eoyal. 

It is remarkable that there is not in English 
any adequate or correct account of the French 
exploration of what is now the coast of New 
England, between 1604 and 1608, though it is 
conceded that they then made the first perma- 
nent European settlement on the continent of 
North America north of St. Augustine. If the 
lions had been the painters it would have been 
otherwise. This omission is probably to be ac- 
counted for partly by the fact that the early 
edition of Champlain's "Voyages " had not been 



PROVINCETOWN 275 

consulted for this purpose. This contains by 
far the most particular, and, I think, the most 
interesting chapter of what we may call the 
Ante -Pilgrim history of New England, extend- 
ing to one hundred and sixty pages quarto ; but 
appears to be unknown equally to the historian 
and the orator on Plymouth Kock. Bancroft 
does not mention Champlain at all among the 
authorities for De Monts' expedition, nor does 
he say that he ever visited the coast of New 
England. Though he bore the title of pilot to 
De Monts, he was, in another sense^ the lead- 
ing spirit, as well as the historian of the expe- 
dition. Holmes, Hildreth, and Barry, and 
apparently all our historians who mention Cham- 
plain, refer to the edition of 1632, in which all 
the separate charts of our harbors, etc., and 
about one half the narrative, are omitted; for 
the author explored so many lands afterward 
that he could afford to forget a part of what he 
had done. Hildreth, speaking of De Monts' 
expedition, says that "he looked into the Penob- 
scot [in 1605], which Pring had discovered two 
years before," saying nothing about Cham- 
plain's extensive exploration of it for De Monts 
in 1604 (Holmes says 1608, and refers to Pur- 
chas); also that he followed in the track of 
Pring along the coast "to Cape Cod, which he 
called Malabarre." (Haliburton had made the 



276 CAPE COD 

same statement before liira in 1829. He called 
it C^-p Blanc, and Malle Barre — the Bad Bar — 
was the name given to a harbor on the east side 
of the Cape.) Pring says nothing about a river 
there. Belknap says that Weymouth discov- 
ered it in 1605. Sir F. Gorges says, in his 
narration,^ 1658, that Pring in 1606 "made a 
perfect discovery of all the rivers and harbors." 
This is the most I can find. Bancroft makes 
Champlain to have discovered more western riv- 
ers in Maine, not naming the Penobscot; he, 
however, must have been the discoverer of dis- 
tances on this river.2 Pring was absent from 
England only about six months, and sailed by 
this part of Cape Cod (Malebarre) because it 
yielded no sassafras, while the French, who 
probably had not heard of Pring, were patiently 
for years exploring the coast in search of a place 
of settlement, sounding and surveying its har- 
bors. 

John Smith's map, published in 1616, from 
observations in 1614-15, is by many regarded 
as the oldest map of New England. It is the 
first that was made after this country was called 
New England, for he so called it ; but in Cham • 
plain's "Voyages," edition 1613 (and Lescarbot, 
in 1612, quotes a still earlier account of his 

1 Maine Hist. Coll., vol. ii. p. 19. 

2 See Belknap, p. 1-17. 



PROVINCETOWN 277 

voyage), there is a map of it made when it was 
known to Christendom as New France, called 
Carte GeograpUque de la JVouvelle Franse 
faictte par U Sleur de Champlain Saint 
Tongois Capintalne ordinaire pour le Roy en 
la Marine,— faict ten 1612, from his observa- 
tions between 1604 and 1607 ; a map extending 
from Labrador to Cape Cod and westward to 
the Great Lakes, and crowded with informa- 
tion, geographical, ethnographical, zoological, 
and botanical. He even gives the variation of 
the compass as observed by himself at that date 
on many parts of the coast. This, taken to- 
gether with the many separate charts of harbirs 
and their soundings on a large scale, which this 
volume contains, — among the rest, Qui ni he 
quy (Kennebec), Choitacoit R. (Saco R.), Le 
Beau j)ort. Port St, Louis (near Cape Ann), 
and others on our coast, — but ivhich are not in 
the edition o/1632, makes this a completer map 
of the New England and adjacent northern coast 
than was made for half a century afterward ; al- 
most, we might be allowed to say, till another 
Frenchman, Des Barres, made another for us, 
which only our late Coast Survey has super- 
seded. Most of the maps of this coast made for 
a long time after betray their indebtedness to 
Champlain. He was a skillful navigator, a 
man of science, and geographer to the King of 



278 CAPE COD 

France. He crossed the Atlantic about twenty 
times, and made nothing of it; often in a small 
vessel in which few would dare to go to sea to- 
day; and on one occasion making the voyage 
from Tadoussac to St. Malo in eighteen da^^s. 
He was in this neighborhood, that is, between 
Annapolis, Nova Scotia, and Cape Cod, observ- 
ing the land and its inhabitants, and making a 
map of the coast, from May, 1604, to Septem- 
ber, 1607, or about three and a half years, and 
he has described minutely his method of survey- 
ing harbors. By his own account, a part of his 
map was engraved in 1604 (?). When Pont- 
Grave and others returned to France in 1606, 
he remained at Port Royal with Poitrincourt, 
"in order," says he, "by the aid of God, to fin- 
ish the chart of the coasts which I had begun; " 
and again in his volume, printed before John 
Smith visited this part of America, he says : " It 
seems to me that I have done my duty as far as 
I could, if I have not forgotten to put in my 
said chart whatever I saw, and give a particular 
knowledge to the public of what had never been 
described nor discovered so particularly as I 
have done it, although some other may have 
heretofore written of it; but it was a very small 
affair in comparison with what we have discov- 
ered within the last ten years." 

It is not generally remembered, if known, by 



PROVINCETOWN 279 

the descendants of the Pilgrims, that when their 
forefathers were spending their first memorable 
winter in the New World, they had for neigh- 
bors a colony of French no further off than Port 
Royal (Annapolis, Nova Scotia), three hundred 
miles distant (Prince seems to make it about 
five hundred miles); where, in spite of many 
vicissitudes, they had been for fifteen years. 
They built a grist-mill there as early as 1606 ; 
also made bricks and turpentine on a stream, 
Williamson says, in 1606. De Monts, who was 
a Protestant, brought his minister with him, 
who came to blows with the Catholic priest on 
the subject of religion. Though these founders 
of Acadie endured no less than the Pilgrims, 
and about the same proportion of them — 
thirty -five out of seventy-nine (Williamson's 
Maine says thirty-six out of seventy) — died the 
first winter at St. Croix, 1604-5, sixteen years 
earlier, no orator, to my knowledge, has ever 
celebrated their enterprise (Williamson's His- 
tory of Maine does considerably), while the 
trials which their successors and descendants 
endured at the hands of the English have fur- 
nished a theme for both the historian and poet.^ 
The remains of their fort at St. Croix were dis- 
covered at the end of the last century, and 
helped decide where the true St. Croix, our 
boundary, was. 

1 See Bancroft's History and Longfellow's Evangeline. 



280 CAPE COD 

The very gravestones of those Frenchmen are 
probably older than the oldest English monu- 
ment in New England north of the Elizabeth 
Islands, or perhaps anywhere in New England, 
for if there are any traces of Gosnold's store- 
house left, his strong works are gone. Bancroft 
says, advisedly, in 1834, "It requires a believ- 
ing eye to discern the ruins of the fort;" and 
that there were no ruins of a fort in 1837. Dr. 
Charles T. Jackson tells me that, in the course 
of a geological survey in 1827, he discovered a 
gravestone, a slab of trap rock, on Goat Island, 
opposite Annapolis (Port Eoyal), in Nova 
Scotia, bearing a Masonic coat-of-arms and the 
date 1606, which is fourteen years earlier than 
the landing of the Pilgrims. This was left in the 
possession of Judge Haliburton, of Nova Scotia. 

There were Jesuit priests in what has since 
been called New England, converting the sav- 
ages at Mount Desert, then St. Savior, in 1613, 
— having come over to Port Eoyal in 1611, 
though they were almost immediately interrupted 
by the English, years before the Pilgrims came 
hither to enjoy their own religion. This ac- 
cording to Champlain. Charlevoix says the 
same; and after coming from France in 1611, 
went west from Port Eoyal along the coast as 
far as the Kennebec in 1612, and was often 
carried from Port Eoyal to Mount Desert. 



PROVINCETOWN 281 

lucleed, the Englishman's history of New 
England commences only when it ceases to be 
New France. Though Cabot was the first to 
discover the continent of North America, Cham- 
plain, in the edition of his Voyages printed in 
1632, after the English had for a season got 
possession of Quebec and Port Royal, complains 
with no little justice : "The common consent of 
all Europe is to represent New France as ex- 
tending at least to the thirty-fifth and thirty- 
sixth degrees of latitude, as appears by the 
maps of the world printed in Spain, Italy, Hol- 
land, Flanders, Germany, and England, until 
they possessed themselves of the coasts of New 
France, where are Acadie, the Etechemains 
(Maine and New Brunswick), the Almouchicois 
(Massachusetts ?), and the Great River St. Law- 
rence, where they have imposed, according to 
their fancy, such names as New England, Scot- 
land, and others ; but it is not easy to efface the 
memory of a thing which is known to all Chris- 
tendom." 

That Cabot merely landed on the uninhabita- 
ble shore of Labrador gave the English no just 
title to New England, or to the United States 
generally, any more than to Patagonia. His 
careful biographer (Biddle) is not certain in 
what voyage he ran down the coast of the United 
States, as is reported, and no one tells us what 



282 CAPE COD 

he saw. Miller (in tlie New York Hist. Coll., 
vol. i. p. 28), says he does not appear to have 
landed anywhere. Contrast with this Verraz- 
zani's tarrying fifteen days at one place on the 
New England coast, and making frequent ex- 
cursions into the interior thence. It chances 
that the latter's letter to Francis I., in 1524, 
contains "the earliest original account extant of 
the Atlantic coast of the United States ; " and 
even from that time the northern part of it be- 
gan to be called La Terra Franceses or French 
Land. A part of it was called New Holland be- 
fore it was called New England. The English 
were very backward to explore and settle the 
continent which they had stumbled upon. The 
French preceded them both in their attempts to 
colonize the continent of North America (Caro- 
lina and Florida, 1562-64), and in their first 
permanent settlement (Port Royal, 1605) ; and 
the right of possession, naturally enough, was 
the one which England mainly respected and 
recognized in the case of Spain, of Portugal, and 
also of France, from the time of Henry VII. 

The explorations of the French gave to the 
world the first valuable maps of these coasts. 
Denys of Honfleur made a map of the Gulf of 
St. Lawrence in 1506. No sooner had Cartier 
explored the St. Lawrence in 1535, than there 
began to be published by his countrymen re- 



PROVINCETOWN 283 

niarkably accurate charts of that river as far up 
as Montreal. It is almost all of the continent 
north of Florida that you recognize on charts 
for more than a generation afterward, — though 
Verrazzani's rude plot (made under French aus- 
pices) was regarded by Hackluyt, more than 
fifty years after his voyage (in 1524), as the 
most accurate representation of our coast. The 
French trail is distinct. They went measuring 
and sounding, and when they got home had 
something to show for their voyages and explo- 
rations. There was no danger of their charts 
beins: lost, as Cabot's have been. 

The most distinguished navigators of that day 
were Italians, or of Italian descent, and Portu- 
guese. The French and Spaniards, though less 
advanced in the science of navigation than the 
former, possessed more imagination and spirit 
of adventure than the English, and were better 
fitted to be the explorers of a new continent 
-even as late as 1751. 

This spirit it was which so early carried the 
French to the Great Lakes and the Mississippi 
on the north, and the Spaniard to the same 
river on the south. It was long before our 
frontiers reached their settlements in the west, 
and a voyageur or coureur de hois is still our 
conductor there. Prairie is a French word, as 
Sierra is a Spanish one. Augustine in Florida 



284 CAPE COD 

and Santa Fe in New Mexico (1582), both built 
by tlie Spaniards, are considered tlie oldest 
towns in the United States. Within the mem- 
ory of the oldest man, the Anglo-Americans 
were confined between the Appalachian Moun- 
tains and the sea, "a space not two hundred 
miles broad," while the Mississippi was by 
treaty the eastern boundary of New France.^ 
So far as inland discovery was concerned, the 
adventurous spirit of the English was that of 
sailors who land but for a day, and their enter- 
prise the enterprise of traders. Cabot spoke 
like an Englishman, as he was, if he said, as 
one reports, in reference to the discovery of the 
American continent, when he found it running 
toward the north, that it was a great disappoint- 
ment to him, being in his way to India; but we 
would rather add to than detract from the fame 
of so great a discoverer. 

Samuel Penhallow, in his History (Boston, 
1726), p. 51, speaking of "Port Eoyal and 
Nova Scotia," says of the last, that its "first 
seizure was by Sir Sebastian Cobbet for the 
crown of Great Britain, in the reign of King 
Henry VII. ; but lay dormant till the year 
1621," when Sir William Alexander got a pat- 
ent of it, and possessed it some years; and 

1 See the pamphlet on settling the Ohio, London, 1763, 
bound up with the travels of Sir John Bartrara. 



PROVINCETOWN 285 

afterward Sir David Kirk was proprietor of it, 
but erelong, "to the surprise of all thinking 
men, it was given up unto the French." 

Even as late as 1633 we find Winthrop, the 
first Governor of the Massachusetts Colony, 
who was not the most likely to be misinformed, 
who, moreover, has the fame^ at least, of hav- 
ing discovered Wachusett Mountain (discerned 
it forty miles inland), talking about the " Great 
Lake" and the "hideous swamps about it," 
near which the Connecticut and • the " Poto- 
mack" took their rise; and among the memora- 
ble events of the year 1642 he chronicles Darby 
Field, an Irishman's expedition to the "White 
hill," from whose top he saw eastward what he 
"judged to be the Gulf of Canada," and west- 
ward what he "judged to be the great lake 
which Canada River comes out of," and where 
he found much "Muscovy glass," and "could 
rive out pieces of forty feet long and seven or 
eight broad." While the very inhabitants of 
New England were thus fabling about the coun- 
try a hundred miles inland, which was a terra 
incognita to them, — or rather many years be- 
fore the earliest date referred to, — Champlain, 
the^rs^ Governor of Canada^ not to mention 
the inland discoveries of Cartier,^ Roberval, 

^ It is remarkable that the first, if not the only, part of 
New Eng-land which Cartier saw was Vermont (he also saw 
the mountains of New York), from Montreal Mountain, in 



286 CAPE COD 

and others, of the preceding century, and his 
own earlier voyage, had already gone to war 
against the Iroquois in their forest forts, and 
penetrated to the Great Lakes and wintered 
there, before a Pilgrim had heard of New 
England. In Champlain's Voyages, printed in 
1613, there is a plate representing a fight in 
which he aided the Canada Indians against the 
Iroquois, near the south end of Lake Cham- 
plain, in July, 1609, eleven years before the 
settlement of Plymouth. Bancroft says he 
joined the Algonquins in an expedition against 
the Iroquois, or Five Nations, in the northwest 
of New York. This is that "Great Lake," 
which the English, hearing some rumor of from 
the French, long after, locate in an "Imaginary 
Province called Laconia, and spent several years 
about 1630 in the vain attempt to discover."^ 
Thomas Morton has a chapter on this "Great 
Lake." In the edition of Champlain's map 
dated 1632, the Falls of Niagara appear; and 
in a great lake northwest of Mer Douce (Lake 
Huron) there is an island represented, over 
which is written, ''''Isle ou il y d une mine de 

1535, sixty-seven years before Gosnold saw Cape Cod. If see- 
ing is discovering, — and that is all that it is proved that Cabot 
knew of the coast of the United States, — then Cartier (to 
omit Verrazzani and Gomez) was the discoverer of New Eng- 
land rather than Gosnold, who is commonly so styled. 

^ Sir Ferdinand Gorges, in Maine Hist. Coll., vol. ii. p. 68. 



PROVINCETOWN 28T 

ctiivre,^^ — "Island where there is a mine of 
copper." This will do for an offset to our Gov- 
ernor's "Muscovy glass." Of all these adven- 
tures and discoveries we have a minute and 
faithful account, giving facts and dates as well 
as charts and soundings, all scientific and 
Frenchman -like, with scarcely one fable or 
traveler's story. 

Probably Cape Cod was visited by Europeans 
long before the seventeenth century. It may 
be that Cabot himself beheld it. Yerrazzani, 
in 1524, according to his own account, spent 
fifteen days on our coast, in latitude 41° 40', 
(some suppose in the harbor of Newport,) and 
often went five or six leagues into the interior 
there, and he says that he sailed thence at once 
one hundred and fifty leagues northeasterly, 
always in sight of the coast. There is a chart 
in Hackluyt's "Divers Voyages," made accord- 
ing to Verrazzani's plot, which last is praised 
for its accuracy by Hackluyt, but I cannot dis- 
tinguish Cape Cod on it, unless it is the "C. 
Arenas," which is in the right latitude, though 
ten degrees west of "Claudia," which is thought 
to be Block Island. 

The "Biographic Universelle" informs us 
that "an ancient manuscript chart drawn in 
1529 by Diego Ribeiro, a Spanish cosmogra- 
pher, has preserved the memory of the voyage 



288 CAPE COD 

of Gomez [a Portuguese sent out by Charles the 
Fifth]. One reads in it under (au dessous) the 
place occupied by the States of New York, 
Connecticut, and Rhode Island, Terre d' JEtienne 
Gomez^ quHl decouvrit en 1525 (Land of Etienne 
Gomez, which he discovered in 1525)." This 
chart, with a memoir, was published at Weimar 
in the last century. 

Jean Alphonse, Roberval's pilot in Canada 
in 1542, one of the most skillful navigators of 
his time, and who has given remarkably minute 
and accurate direction for sailing up the St. 
Lawrence, showing that he knows what he is 
talking about, says in his "Routier" (it is in 
Hackkiyt), "I have been at a bay as far as the 
forty-second degree, between Norimbegue [the 
Penobscot?] and Florida, but I have not ex- 
plored the bottom of it, and I do not know 
whether it passes from one land to the other," 
i. e., to Asia. (" J'ai ete a une Baye jusques 
])ar les 42® degres entre la Norimbegue et la 
Floride; mais je n'en ai pas cherche le fond, et 
ne sgais pas si elle passe d'une terre a I'autre.") 
This may refer to Massachusetts Bay, if not 
possibly to the western inclination of the coast 
a little farther south. When he says, "I have 
no doubt that the Norimbegue enters into the 
river of Canada," he is perhaps so interpreting 
some account which the Indians had given 



PROVINCETOWN 289 

respecting the route from the St. Lawrence to 
the Atlantic, by the St. John, or Penobscot, 
or possibly even the Hudson River. 

We hear rumors of this country of "Norum- 
bega " and its great city from many quarters. 
In a discourse by a great French sea-captain in 
Ramusio's third volume (155G-65), this is said 
to be the name given to the land by its inhabi- 
tants, and Verrazzani is called the discoverer of 
it ; another in 1607 makes the natives call it, or 
the river, Aguncia. It is represented as an 
island on an accompanying chart. It is fre- 
quently spoken of by old writers as a country of 
indefinite extent, between Canada and Florida, 
and it appears as a large island with Cape Bre- 
ton at its eastern extremity, on the map made 
according to Verrazzani 's plot in Hackluyt's 
"Divers Voyages." These maps and rumors 
may have been the origin of the notion, common 
among the early settlers, that New England 
was an island. The country and city of Norum- 
bega appear about where Maine now is on a 
map in Ortelius ("Theatrum Orbis Terrarum," 
Antwerp, 1570), and the "R. Grande " is drawn 
where the Penobscot or St. John might be. 

In 1604, Champlain being sent by the Sieur 
de Monts to explore the coast of Norembegue, 
sailed up the Penobscot twenty -two or twenty- 
three leagues from "Isle Haute," or till he was 



290 CAPE COD 

stopped by the falls. He says: "I think that 
this river is that which many pilots and histo- 
rians call Norembegue, and which the greater 
part have described as great and spacious, with 
numerous islands ; and its entrance in the forty- 
third or forty-third and one half, or, according 
to others, the forty-fourth degree of latitude, 
more or less." He is convinced tliat "the 
greater part " of those who speak of a great city 
there have never seen it, but repeat a mere 
rumor, but he thinks that some have seen the 
mouth of the river, since it answers to their de- 
scription. 

Under date of 1607 Champlain writes: 
"Three or four leagues north of the Cap de 
Poitrincourt [near the head of the Bay of Fundy 
in Nova Scotia] we found a cross, which was 
very old, covered with moss and almost all de- 
cayed, which was an evident sign that there had 
formerly been Christians there." 

Also the following passage from Lescarbot 
will show how much the neighboring coasts were 
frequented by Europeans in the sixteenth cen- 
tury. Speaking of his return from Port Royal 
to France in 1607, he says: "At last, within 
four leagues of Campseau [the Gut of Canso], 
we arrived at a harbor [in Nova Scotia], where 
a worthy old gentleman from St. John de Lus, 
named Captain Savale, was fishing, who re* 



PROVINCETOWN 291 

ceived us with the utmost courtesy. And as 
this harbor, which is small, but very good, has 
no name, I have given it on my geographical 
chart the name of Savalet. [It is on Cham- 
plain's map also.] This worthy man told us 
that this voyage was the forty-second which he 
had made to those parts, and yet the Newfound- 
landers [^Terre neuviers] make only one a year. 
He was wonderfully content with his fishery, 
and informed us that he made daily fifty crowns' 
worth of cod, and that his voyage would be 
worth ten thousand francs. He had sixteen 
men in his employ ; and his vessel was of eighty 
tons, which could carry a hundred thousand dry 
cod."^ They dried their fish on the rocks on 
shore. 

The ''Isola della Kena " (Sable Tsland?) ap- 
pears on the chart of "Nuova Francia" and 
Norumbega, accompanying the "Discourse" 
above referred to in Kamusio's third volume, 
edition 1556-65. Champlain speaks of there 
being at the Isle of Sable, in 1604, "grass pas- 
tured by oxen (boeufs) and cows which the Por- 
tuguese carried there more than sixty years ago," 
i, e., sixty years before 1613; in a later edition 
he says, which came out of a Spanish vessel 
which was lost in endeavoring to settle on the 
Isle of Sable; and he states that De la Roche's 
} Histoire de la Nouvelle France, 1612. 



292 CAPE COD 

men, who were left on tliis island seven years 
from 1598, lived on the flesh of these cattle 
which they found "e?z quantie^^^ and built houses 
out of the wrecks of vessels which came to the 
island ("perhaps Gilbert's"), there being no 
wood or stone. Lescarbot says that they lived 
"on fish and the milk of cows left there about 
eighty years before by Baron de Leri and Saint 
Just." Charlevoix says they ate up the cattle 
and then lived on fish. Haliburton speaks of 
cattle left there as a rumor. De Leri and Saint 
Just had suggested plans of colonization on the 
Isle of Sable as early as 1515 (1508 ?) according 
to Bancroft, referring to Charlevoix. These 
are but a few of the instances which I might 
^uote. 

Cape Cod is commonly said to have been dis- 
covered in 1602. We will consider at length 
under what circumstances, and with what obser- 
vation and expectations, the first Englishmen 
whom history clearly discerns approached the 
coast of New England. According to the ac- 
counts of Archer and Brereton (both of whom 
accompanied Gosnold), on the 26th of March, 
1602, old style. Captain Bartholomew Gosnold 
set sail from Falmouth, England, for the North 
Part of Virginia, in a small bark called the 
Concord, they being in all, says one account, 
"thirty-two persons, whereof eight mariners 



PROVINCETOWN 293 

and sailors, twelve purposing upon the discovery 
to return with the ship for England, the rest 
remain there for population." This is regarded 
as "the first attempt of the English to make a 
settlement within the limits of New England." 
Pursuing a new and a shorter course than the 
usual one by the Canaries, "the 14th of April 
following" they had sight of Saint Mary's, an 
island of the Azores." As their sailors were 
few and "none of the best," (I use their own 
phrases,) and they were "going upon an un- 
known coast," they were not "over-bold to stand 
in with the shore but in open weather; " so they 
made their first discovery of land with the lead. 
The 23d of April the ocean appeared yellow, 
but on taking up some of the water in a bucket, 
"it altered not either in color or taste from the 
sea azure." The 7th of May they saw divers 
birds whose names they knew, and many others 
in their "English tongue of no name." The 
8th of May "the water changed to a yellowish 
green, where at seventy fathoms" they "had 
ground. ' The 9th, they had upon their lead 
"many glittering stones," — "which might 
promise some mineral matter in the bottom." 
The 10th, they were over a bank which they 
thought to be near the western end of St. John's 
Island, and saw schools of fish. The 12th, they 
say, " continually passed fleeting by us sea-oare. 



294 CAPE COD 

which seemed to have their movable course 
towards the northeast." On the 13th they ob- 
served "great beds of weeds, much wood, and 
divers things else floating by," and "had smell- 
ing of the shore much as from the southern 
Cape and Andalusia in Spain." On Friday, 
the 14th, early in the morning they descried 
land on the north, in the latitude of forty -three 
degrees, apparently some part of the coast of 
Maine. Williamson ^ says it certainly could not 
have been south of the central Isle of Shoals. 
Belknap inclines to think it the south side of 
Cape Ann. Standing fair along by the shore, 
about twelve o^ clock the same day, they came to 
anchor and were visited by eight savages, who 
came off to them "in a Biscay shallop, with 
sail and oars," — "an iron grapple, and a ket- 
tle of copper." These they at first mistook for 
"Christians distressed." One of them was 
"apparelled with a waistcoat and breeches of 
black serge, made after our sea-fashion, hoes 
and shoes on his feet; all the rest (saving one 
that had a pair of breeches of blue cloth) were 
naked." They appeared to have had dealings 
with "some Basques of St. John de Luz, and 
to understand much more than we," say the 
English, "for want of language, could compre- 
hend." But they soon "set sail westward, leav- 
^ History of Maine. 



"■*t^ 


^ '""^^ 


^ ^ -^ 




M^< '^Hh 




#'■- ■■•1^ 




1 ^;3 








il * ' .^^tS^K - IT 






•l^^ 



PROVINCETOWN 295 

ing them and their coast." (This was a remark- 
able discovery for discoverers.) 

"The 15th day," writes Gabriel Archer, 
"we had again sight of the land, which made 
ahead, being as we thought an island, by reason 
of a large sound that appeared westward be- 
tween it and the main, for coming to the west 
end thereof, we did perceive a large opening, 
we called it Shoal Hope. Near this cape we 
came to anchor in fifteen fathoms, where we 
took great store of cod-fish, for which we altered 
the name and called it Cape Cod. Here we saw 
skulls of herring, mackerel, and other small 
fish, in great abundance. This is a low, sandy 
shoal, but without danger ; also we came to an- 
chor again in sixteen fathoms, fair by the land 
in the latitude of forty -two degrees. This Cape 
is well near a mile broad, and lieth northeast by 
east. The Captain went here ashore, and found 
the ground to be full of peas, strawberries, 
whortleberries, etc., as then unripe, the sand 
also by the shore somewhat deep ; the firewood 
there by us taken in was of cypress, birch, 
witch-hazel, and beach. A young Indian came 
here to the captain, armed with his bow and ar- 
rows, and had certain plates of copper hanging 
at his ears; he showed a willingness to help us 
in our occasions." 

"The 16th we trended the coast southerly, 



296 CAPE COD 

which was all champaign and full of grass, but 
the islands somewhat woody." 

Or, according to the account of John Brere- 
ton, "riding here," that is, where they first 
communicated with the natives, "in no very 
good harbor, and withal doubting the weather, 
about three of the clock the same day in the af- 
ternoon we weighed, and standing southerly off 
into sea the rest of that day and the night fol- 
lowing, with a fresh gale of wind, in the morn- 
ing we found ourselves embayed with a mighty 
headland; but coming to an anchor about nine 
of the clock the same day, within a league of the 
shore, we hoisted out the one half of our shallop, 
and Captain Bartholomew Gosnold, myself and 
three others, went ashore, being a white sandy 
and very bold shore ; and marching all that af- 
ternoon with our muskets on our necks, on the 
highest hills which we saw (the weather very 
hot) at length we perceived this headland to be 
parcel of the main, and sundry islands lying 
almost round about it; so returning towards 
evening to our shallop (for by that time the other 
part was brought ashore and set together), we 
espied an Indian, a young man of proper stat- 
ure, and of a pleasing countenance, and after 
some familiarity with him, we left him at the 
sea side, and returned to our ship, where in five 
or six hours' absence we had pestered our ship 



PROVINCETOWN 297 

so with codfish, that we threw numbers of them 
overboiircl again; and surely I am persuaded 
that in the months of March, April, and May, 
there is upon this coast better fishing, and in as 
great plenty, as in Newfoundland ; for the skulls 
of mackerel, herrings, cod, and other fish, that 
we daily saw as we went and came from the 
shore, were wonderful," etc. 

"From this place we sailed round about this 
headland, almost all the points of the compass, 
the shore very bold ; but as no coast is free from 
dangers, so I am persuaded this is as free as 
any. The land somewhat low, full of goodly 
woods, but in some places plain." 

It is not quite clear on which side of the Cape 
they landed. If it was inside, as would appear 
from Brereton's words, "From this place we 
sailed round about this headland almost all the 
points of the compass," it must have been on 
the western shore either of Truro or Wellfleet. 
To one sailing south into Barnstable Bay along 
the Cape, the only "white, sandy, and very bold 
shore" that appears is in these towns, though 
the bank is not so high there as on the eastern 
side. At a distance of four or five miles the 
sandy cliffs there look like a long fort of yellow 
sandstone, they are so level and regular, espe- 
cially in Wellfleet, — the fort of the land de- 
fending itself against the encroachments of the 



298 CAPE COD 

Ocean. They are streaked here and there with 
a reddish sand as if painted. Farther south the 
shore is more flat, and less obviously and ab- 
ruptly sandy, and a little tinge of green here 
and there in the marshes appears to the sailor 
like a rare and precious emerald. But in the 
Journal of Pring's Voyage the next year (and 
Salterne, who was with Pring, had accompanied 
Gosnold) it is said, "Departing hence [i. e., 
from Savage Rock] we bare into that great 
gulf which Captain Gosnold overshot the year 
before."! 

So they sailed round the Cape, calling the 
southeasterly extremity "Point Cave," till they 
came to an island which they named Martha's 
Vineyard (now called No Man's Land), and an- 
other on which they dwelt awhile, which they 
named Elizabeth's Island, in honor of the 
queen, one of the grouj) since so called, now 
known by its Indian name Cuttyhunk. There 
they built a small storehouse, the first house 
built by the English in New England, whose 
cellar could recently still be seen, made partly 

^ " Savage Rock," which, some have supposed to be, from 
the name, the Salvages^ a ledge about two miles off Rockport, 
Cape Ann, was probably the Nubble, a large, high rock near 
the shore, on the east side of York Harbor, Maine. The first 
land made by Gosnold is presumed by experienced navigators 
to be Cape Elizabeth on the same coast. (See Babson's His' 
lory of Gloucester, Massachusetts.) 



PROVINCETOWN 299 

of stones taken from the beach. Bancroft says 
(edition of 1837) the ruins of the fort can no 
longer be discerned. Tliey who were to have 
remained becoming discontented, all together 
set sail for England, with a load of sassafras 
and other commodities, on the 18th of June fol- 
lowing. 

The next year came Martin Pring, looking 
for sassafras, and thereafter they began to come 
thick and fast, until long after sassafras had 
lost its reputation. 

These are the oldest accounts which we have 
of Cape Cod, unless, perchance. Cape Cod is, 
as some suppose, the same with that "Kial-ar- 
nes " or Keel-Cape, on which, according to old 
Icelandic manuscripts, Thorwald, son of Eric 
the Red, after sailing many days southwest 
from Greenland, broke his keel in the year 
1004 ; and where, according to another, in some 
respects less trustworthy manuscript, Thor-finn 
Karlsefue ("that is, one who promises or is 
destined to be an able or great man; " he is said 
to have had a son born in New England, from 
whom Thorwaldsen the sculptor was descended), 
sailing past, in the year 1007, with his wife 
Gudrida, Snorre Thorbrandson, Biarne Grinolf- 
son, and Thorhall Garnlason, distinguished 
Norsemen, in three ships containing "one hun- 
dred and sixty men and all sorts of live stock" 



300 CAPE COD 

(probably the first Norway rats among the rest), 
having the land "on the right side "of them, 
"roved ashore," and found " Or-cefi (trackless 
deserts)," and ^' Strand-ir lang-ar oh sand-ar 
(long, narrow beaches and sand-hills)," and 
"called the shores Furdu-strand-ir (Wonder 
Strands), because the sailing by them seemed 
long." 

According to the Icelandic manuscripts, 
Thorwald was the first then, — unless possibly 
one Biarne Heriulf son {%. e. , son of Heriulf ) who 
had been seized with a great desire to travel, 
sailing from Iceland to Greenland in the year 
986 to join his father who had migrated thither, 
for he had resolved, says the manuscript, "to 
spend the following winter, like all the preced- 
ing ones, with his father," — being driven far 
to the southwest by a storm, when it cleared up 
saw the low land of Cape Cod looming faintly 
in the distance ; but this not answering to the 
description of Greenland, he put his vessel 
about, and, sailing northward along the coast, 
at length reached Greenland and his father. 
At any rate, he may put forth a strong claim to 
be regarded as the discoverer of the American 
continent. 

These Northmen were a hardy race, whose 
younger sons inherited the ocean, and traversed 
it without chart or compass, and they are said 



PROVINCETOWN 301 

to have been "the first who learned the art of 
sailing on a wind." Moreover, they had a 
habit of casting their door-posts overboard and 
settling wherever they went ashore. But as 
Biarne, and Thorwald, and Thorfiini have not 
mentioned the latitude and longitude distinctly 
enough, though we have great respect for them 
as skillful and adventurous navigators, we must 
for the present remain in doubt as to what capes 
they did see. We think that they were consid- 
erably further north. 

If time and space permitted, I could present 
the claims of several other worthy persons. 
Lescarbot, in 1609, asserts that the French sail- 
ors had been accustomed to frequent the New- 
foundland Banks from time immemorial, "for 
the codfish with which they feed almost all 
Europe and supply all sea-going vessels," and 
accordingly "the language of the nearest lands 
is half Basque; " and he quotes Postel, a learned 
but extravagant French author, born in 1510, 
only six years after the Basques, Bretons, and 
Normans are said to have discovered the Grand 
Bank and adjacent islands, as saying, in his 
Charte Geogra'phiqiie^ which we have not seen : 
"Terra haec ob lucrosissimam piscationis utili- 
tatem summa litterarum memoria a Gallis adiri 
solita, et ante mille sexcentos annos frequentari 
solita est; sed eo quod sit urbibus inculta et 



302 CAPE COD 

vasta, spreta est." "This land, on account of 
its very lucrative fishery, was accustomed to be 
visited by the Gauls from the very dawn of his- 
tory, and more than sixteen hundred years ago 
was accustomed to be frequented; but because 
it was unadorned with cities, and waste, it was 
despised." 

It is the old story. Bob Smith discovered 
the mine, but I discovered it to the world. And 
now Bob Smith is putting in his claim. 

But let us not laugh at Postel and his visions. 
He was perhaps better posted up than we; and 
if he does seem to draw the long bow, it may be 
because he had a long way to shoot, — quite 
across the Atlantic. If America was found and 
lost again once, as most of us believe, then why 
not twice? especially as there were likely to be 
so few records of an earlier discovery. Con- 
sider what stuff history is made of, — that for 
the most part it is merely a story agreed on by 
posterity. Who will tell us even how many 
Russians were engaged in the battle of the 
Chernaya, the other day? Yet, no doubt, Mr. 
Scriblerus, the historian, will fix on a definite 
number for the schoolboys to commit to their 
excellent memories. What, then, of the num- 
ber of Persians at Salamis? The historian 
whom I read knew as much about the position 
of the parties and their tactics in the last-men- 



PROVINCETOWN 303 

tioned affair, as they who describe a recent bat- 
tle in an article for the pres'. nowadays, before 
the particulars have arrived. I believe that, if 
I were to live the life of mankind over again 
myself, (which I would not be hired to do,) with 
the Universal History in my hands, I should 
not be able to tell what was what. : 

Earlier than the date Postel refers to, at any 
rate. Cape Cod lay in utter darkness to the civ- 
ilized world, though even then the sun rose from 
eastward out of the sea every day, and, rolling 
over the Cape, went down westward into the 
Bay. It was even then Cape and Bay, — ay, 
the Cape of Codfish^ and the Bay of the Massa- 
chusetts^ perchance. 

Quite recently, on the 11th of November^ 
1620, old style, as is well known, the Pilgrims 
in the Mayflower came to anchor in Cape Cod 
Harbor. They had loosed from Plymouth, 
England, the 6th of September, and, in the 
words of "Mourt's Kelation," "after many 
difficulties in boisterous storms, at length, by 
God's providence, upon the 9th of November, 
we espied land, which we deemed to be Cape 
Cod, and so afterward it proved. Upon the 
11th of November we came to anchor in the 
bay, which is a good harbor and pleasant bay, 
circled round except in the entrance, which is 
about four miles over from land to land, com- 



804 CAPE COD 

passed about to the very sea with oaks, pines, 
juniper, sassafras, and other sweet wood. It is 
a harbor wherein a thousand sail of ships may 
safely ride. There we relieved ourselves with 
wood and water, and refreshed our people, 
while our shallop was fitted to coast the bay, to 
search for an habitation." There we put up at 
Puller's Hotel, passing by the Pilgrim House as 
too high for us (we learned afterward that we 
need not have been so particular), and we re- 
freshed ourselves with hashed fish and beans, 
beside taking in a supply of liquids (which were 
not intoxicating), while our legs were refitted to 
coast the back-side. Further say the Pilgrims : 
"We could not come near the shore by three 
quarters of an English mile, because of shallow 
water; which was a great prejudice to us; for 
our people going on shore were forced to wade 
a bow-shot or two in going aland, which caused 
many to get colds and coughs; for it was many 
times freezing cold weather." They afterwards 
say: "It brought much weakness amongst us;'* 
and no doubt it led to the death of some at Ply- 
mouth. 

The harbor of Provincetown is very shallow 
near the shore, especially about the head, where 
the Pilgrims landed. When I left this place 
the next summer, the steamer could not get up 
to the wharf, but we were carried out to a large 



PROVINCETOWN 305 

boat in a cart as much as thirty rods in shallow 
water, while a troop of little boys kept us com- 
pany, wading around, and thence we pulled to 
the steamer by a rope. The harbor being thus 
shallow and sandy about the shore, coasters are 
accustomed to run in here to paint their vessels, 
which are left high and dry when the tide goes 
down. 

It chanced that the Sunday morning that we 
were there, I had joined a j)arty of men who 
were smoking and lolling over a pile of boards 
on one of the wharves, (nihil humtmum a me, 
etc.,) when our landlord, who was a sort of 
tithing-man, went off to stop some sailors who 
were engaged in painting their vessel. Our 
party was recruited from time to time by other 
citizens, who came rubbing their eyes as if they 
had just got out of bed; and one old man re- 
marked to me that it was the custom there to lie 
abed very late on Sunday, it being a day of 
rest. I remarked that, as I thought, they might 
as well let the man paint, for all us. It was 
not noisy work, and would not disturb our devo- 
tions. But a young man in the company, tak- 
ing his pipe out of his mouth, said that it was 
a plain contradiction of the law of God, which 
he quoted, and if they did not have some such 
regulation, vessels would run in there to tar, 
and rig, and paint, and they would have no Sab- 



306 CAPE COD 

bath at all. This was a good argument enough, 
if he had not put it in the name of religion. 
The next summer, as I sat on a hill there one 
sultry Sunday afternoon, the meeting-house 
windows being open, my meditations were inter- 
rupted by the noise of a preacher who shouted 
like a boatswain, profaning the quiet atmo- 
sphere, and who, I fancied, must have taken 
off his coat. Few things could have been more 
disgusting or disheartening. I wished the tith- 
ing-man would stop him. 

The Pilgrims say, "There was the greatest 
store of fowl that ever we saw." 

We saw no fowl there, except gulls of various 
kinds; but the greatest store of them that ever 
we saw was on a flat but slightly covered with 
water on the east side of the harbor, and we ob- 
served a man who had landed there from a boat 
creeping along the shore in order to get a shot 
at them, but they all rose and flew away in a 
great scattering flock, too soon for him, having 
apparently got their dinners, though he did not 
get his. 

It is remarkable that the Pilgrims (or their 
reporter) describe this part of the Cape, not 
only as well wooded, but as having a deep and 
excellent soil, and hardly mention the word 
sand. Now what strikes the voyager is the bar- 
renness and desolation of the land. They found 



PROVINCETOWN 307 

"the ground or earth sand-hills, much like the 
downs in Holland, but much better ; the crust of 
the earth, a spit's depth, excellent black earth." 
We found that the earth had lost its crust, — 
if, indeed, it ever had any, — and that there 
was no soil to speak of. We did not see enough 
black earth in Provincetown to fill a flower-pot, 
unless in the swamps. They found it "all 
wooded with oaks, pines, sassafras, juniper, 
birch, holly, vines, some ash, walnut; the wood 
for the most part open and without underwood, 
fit either to go or ride in." We saw scarcely 
anything high enough to be called a tree, except 
a little low wood at the east end of the town, 
and the few ornamental trees in its yards, — 
only a few small specimens of some of the above 
kinds on the sand-hills in the rear ; but it was 
all thick shrubbery, without any large wood 
above it, very unfit either to go or ride in. 
The greater part of the land was a perfect des- 
ert of yellow sand, rippled like waves by the 
wind, in which only a little beach-grass grew 
here and there. They say that, just after pass- 
ing the head of East Harbor Creek, the boughs 
and bushes "tore " their "very armor in pieces " 
(the same thing happened to such armor as we 
wore, when out of curiosity we took to the 
bushes); or they came to deep valleys, "full of 
brush, wood-gaile, and long grass," and "found 
springs of fresh water." 



308 CAPE COD 

For the most part we saw neither bough nor 
bush, not so much as a shrub to tear our clothes 
against if we would, and a sheep would lose 
none of its fleece, even if it found herbage 
enough to make fleece grow there. We saw 
rather beach and poverty-grass, and merely sor- 
rel enough to color the surface. I suppose, 
then, by wood-gaile they mean the bayberry. 

All accounts agree in affirming that this part 
of the Cape was comparatively well wooded a 
century ago. But notwithstanding the great 
changes which have taken place in these re- 
spects, I cannot but think that we must make 
some allowance for the greenness of the Pilgrims 
in these matters, which caused them to see 
green. We do not believe that the trees were 
large or the soil was deep here. Their account 
may be true particularly, but it is generally 
false. They saw literally, as well as figura- 
tively, but one side of the Cape. They natu- 
rally exaggerated the fairness and attractiveness 
of the land, for they were glad to get to any 
land at all after that anxious voyage. Every- 
thing appeared to them of the color of the rose, 
and had the scent of juniper and sassafras. 
Very different is the general and off-hand ac- 
count given by Captain John Smith, who was 
on this coast six years earlier, and speaks like 
an old traveler, voyager, and soldier, who had 



PROVINCETOWN 309 

seen too much of the world to exaggerate, or 
even to dwell long on a part of it. In his 
"Description of New England," printed in 
1616, after speaking of Accomack, since called 
Plymouth, he says : '^ Cape Cod is the next pre- 
sents itself, which is only a headland of high 
hills of sand, overgrown with shrubby pines, 
hurts \i. e. whorts, or whortleberries], and such 
trash, but an excellent harbor for all weathers. 
This Cape is made by the main sea on the one 
side, and a great bay on the other, in form of 
a sickle." Champlain had already written, 
"Which we named Cap Blanc (Cape White), 
because they were sands and downs (pahles et 
dunes') which appeared thus." 

When the Pilgi'ims get to Plymouth their 
reporter says again, "The land for the crust of 
the earth is a spit's depth," — that would seem 
to be their recipe for an earth's crust, — "ex- 
cellent black mould and fat in some places." 
However, according to Bradford himself, whom 
some consider the author of part of "Mourt's 
Relation," they who came over in the Fortune 
the next year were somewhat daunted when 
"they came into the harbor of Cape Cod, and 
there saw nothing but a naked and barren 
place." They soon found out their mistake 
with respect to the goodness of Plymouth soil. 
Yet when at length, some years later, when they 



310 CAPE COD 

were fully satisfied of the poorness of the place 
which they had chosen, "the greater part," says 
Bradford, "consented to a removal to a place 
called Nausett," they agreed to remove all to- 
gether to Nauset, now Eastham, which was 
jumping out of the frying-pan into the fire; and 
some of the most respectable of the inhabitants 
of Plymouth did actually remove thither accord- 
ingly. 

It must be confessed that the Pilgrims pos- 
sessed but few of the qualities of the modern 
pioneer. They were not the ancestors of the 
American backwoodsmen. They did not go at 
once into the woods with their axes. They were 
a family and church, and were more anxious to 
keep together, though it were on the sand, than 
to explore and colonize a New World. When 
the above-mentioned company removed to East- 
ham, the church at Plymouth was left, to use 
Bradford's expression, "like an ancient mother 
grown old, and forsaken of her children." 
Though they landed on Clark's Island in Ply- 
mouth harbor, the 9th of December (O. S.), 
and the 16th all hands came to Plymouth, and 
the 18th they rambled about the mainland, and 
the 19th decided to settle there, it was the 8th 
of January before Francis Billington went with 
one of the master's mates to look at the magnifi- 
cent pond or lake now called "Billington Sea,'* 



PROVINCETOWN 311 

about two miles distant, which he had discov- 
ered from the top of a tree, and mistook for a 
great sea. And the 7th of March "Master 
Carver with five others went to the great ponds 
which seem to be excellent fishing," both which 
points are within the compass of an ordinary 
afternoon's ramble, — however wild the coun- 
try. It is true they were busy at first about 
their building, and were hindered in that by 
much foul weather ; but a party of emigrants to 
California or Oregon, with no less work on their 
hands, — and more hostile Indians, — would do 
as much exploring the first afternoon, and the 
Sieur de Champlain would have sought an in- 
terview with the savages, and examined the 
country as far as the Connecticut, and made a 
map of it, before Billing-ton had climbed his 
tree. Or contrast them only with the French 
searching for copper about the Bay of Fundy 
in 1603, tracing up small streams with Indian 
guides. Nevertheless, the Pilgrims were pio- 
neers, and the ancestors of pioneers, in a far 
grander enterprise. 

By this time we saw the little steamer Nau- 
shon entering the harbor, and heard the sound 
of her whistle, and came down from the hills to 
meet her at the wharf. So we took leave or 
Cape Cod and its inhabitants. We liked the 
manners of the last, what little we saw of them. 



312 CAPE COD 

very much. They were particularly downright 
and good-humored. The old people appeared 
remarkably well preserved, as if by the saltness 
of the atmosphere, and after having once mis- 
taken, we could never be certain whether we 
were talking to a coeval of our grandparents, or 
to one of our own age. They are said to be 
more purely the descendants of the Pilgrims 
than the inhabitants of any other part of the 
State. We were told that "sometimes, when 
the court comes together at Barnstable, they 
have not a single criminal to try, and the jail is 
shut up." It was "to let" when we were there. 
Until quite recently there was no regular lawyer 
below Orleans. Who then will complain of a 
few regular man-eating sharks along the back- 
side? 

One of the ministers of Truro, when I asked 
what the fishermen did in the winter, answered 
that they did nothing but go a-visiting, sit 
about and tell stories, — though they worked 
hard in summer. Yet it is not a long vacation 
they get. I am sorry that I have not been there 
in the winter to hear their yarns. Almost 
every Cape man is Captain of some craft or 
other, — every man at least who is at the head 
of his own affairs, though it is not every one 
that is, for some heads have the force of Alplia 
p7'ivative, negativing all the efforts which Nature 



PROVINCETOWN 813 

would fain make through them. The greater 
number of men are merely corporals. It is 
worth the while to talk with one whom his 
neighbors address as Captain, though his craft 
may have long been sunk, and he may be hold- 
ing by his teeth to the shattered mast of a pipe 
alone, and only gets haK-seas-over in a figura- 
tive sense, now. He is pretty sure to vindicate 
his right to the title at last, — can tell one or 
two good stories at least. 

For the most part we saw only the back-side 
of the towns, but our story is true as far as it 
goes. We might have made more of the Bay 
side, but we were inclined to open our eyes 
widest at the Atlantic. We did not care to see 
those features of the Cape in which it is inferior 
or merely equal to the mainland, but only those 
in which it is peculiar or superior. We cannot 
say how its towns look in front to one who goes 
to meet them ; we went to see the ocean behind 
them. They were merely the raft on which we 
stood, and we took notice of the barnacles which 
adhered to it, and some carvings upon it. 

Before we left the wharf we made the acquain- 
tance of a passenger whom we had seen at the 
hotel. When we asked him which way he came 
to Provincetown, he answered that he was cast 
ashore at Wood End, Saturday night, in the 
same storm in which the St. John was wrecked. 



314 CAPE COD 

He had been at work as a carpenter in Maine, 
and took passage for Boston in a schooner laden 
with lumber. When the storm came on, they 
endeavored to get into Provincetown harbor. 
"It was dark and misty," said he, "and as we 
were steering for Long Point Light we suddenly 
saw the land near us, — for our compass was 
out of order, — varied several degrees [a mar- 
iner always casts the blame on his compass], — • 
but there being a mist on shore, we thought it 
was farther off than it was, and so held on, and 
we immediately struck on the bar. Says the 
Captain, 'We are all lost.' Says I to the Cap- 
tain, 'Now don't let her strike again this way; 
head her right on.' The Captain thought a 
moment, and then headed her on. The sea 
washed completely over us, and well-nigh took 
the breath out of my body. I held on to the 
running rigging, but I have learned to hold on 
to the standing rigging the next time." "Well, 
were there any drowned?" I asked. "No; we 
all got safe to a house at Wood End, at mid- 
night, wet to our skins, and haK frozen to 
death." He had apparently spent the .time 
since playing checkers at the hotel, and was 
congratulating himself on having beaten a tall 
fellow-boarder at that game. " The vessel is to 
be sold at auction to-day," he added. (We had 
heard the sound of the crier's bell which adver- 



PROVINCETOWN 315 

tised it.) "The Captain is rather down about 
it, but I tell him to cheer up and he will soon 
get another vessel." 

At that moment the Captain called to him 
from the wharf. He looked like a man just 
from the country, with a cap made of a wood- 
chuck's skin, and now that I had heard a part 
of his history, he appeared singularly destitute, 
— a Captain without any vessel, only a great- 
coat! and that perhaps a borrowed one! Not 
even a dog followed him ; only his title stuck to 
him. I also saw one of the crew. They all had 
caps of the same pattern, and wore a subdued 
look, in addition to their naturally aquiline 
features, as if a breaker — a "comber" — had 
washed over them. As we passed Wood End, 
we noticed the pile of lumber on the shore which 
had made the cargo of their vessel. 

About Long Point in the summer you com- 
monly see them catching lobsters for the New 
York market, from small boats just off the 
shore, or rather, the lobsters catch themselves, 
for they cling to the netting on which the bait 
is placed, of their own accord, and thus are 
drawn up. They sell them fresh for two cents 
apiece. Man needs to know but little more 
than a lobster in order to catch him in his traps. 
The mackerel fleet had been getting to sea, one 
after another, ever since midnight, and as we 



316 CAPE COD 

were leaving the Cape we passed near to many 
of them under sail, and got a nearer view than 
we had had ; — half a dozen red-shirted men and 
boys, leaning over the rail to look at us, the 
skipper shouting back the number of barrels he 
had caught, in answer to our inquiry. All sail- 
ors pause to watch a steamer, and shout in wel- 
come or derision. In one a large Newfoundland 
dog put his paws on the rail and stood up as 
high as any of them, and looked as wise. But 
the skipper, who did not wish to be seen no 
better employed than a dog, rapped him on the 
nose and sent him below. Such is human jus- 
tice! I thought I could hear him making an 
effective appeal down there from human to di- 
vine justice. He must have had much the clean- 
est breast of the two. 

Still, many a mile behind us across the Bay, 
we saw the white sails of the mackerel fishers 
hovering round Cape Cod, and when they were 
all hull down, and the low extremity of the 
Cape was also down, their white sails still ap- 
peared on both sides of it, around where it had 
sunk, like a city on the ocean, proclaiming the 
rare qualities of Cape Cod Harbor. But before 
the extremity of the Cape had completely sunk, 
it appeared like a filmy sliver of land lying flat 
on the ocean, and later still a mere reflection of 
a sand-bar on the haze above. Its name sug- 



PROVINCETOWN ^^'^ 

gests a homely truth, but it would be more 
poetic if it described the impression which it 
makes on the beholder. Some capes have pe- 
culiarly suggestive names. There is Cape 
Wrath, the northwest point of Scotland, for m- 
stance; what a good name for a cape lying far 
away, dark over the water, under a lowering sky ! 
Mild as it was on shore this morning, the 
wind was cold and piercing on the water. 
Though it be the hottest day in July on land, 
and the voyage is to last but four hours, take 
your thickest clothes with you, for you are 
about to float over melted icebergs. When I 
left Boston in the steamboat on the 25th of 
June the next year, it was a quite warm day on 
shore. The passengers were dressed in their 
thinnest clothes, and at first sat under their um- 
brellas, but when we were fairly out on the Bay, 
such as had only thin coats were suffering with 
the cold, and sought the shelter of the pilot's 
house and the warmth of the chimney. But 
when we approached the harbor of Province- 
town, I was surprised to perceive what an influ- 
ence that low and narrow strip of sand, only a 
mile or two in width, had over the temperature 
of the air for many miles around. We pene- 
trated into a sultry atmosphere where our thin 
coats were once more in fashion, and found the 
inhabitants sweltering. 



318 CAPE COD 

Leaving far on one side Manomet Point in 
Plymouth and the Scituate shore, after being 
out of sight of land for an hour or two, for it 
was rather hazy, we neared the Cohasset Rocks 
again at Minot's Ledge, and saw the great 
tupelo-tree on the edge of Scituate, which lifts 
its dome, like an umbelliferous plant, high over 
the surrounding forest, and is conspicuous for 
many miles over land and water. Here was the 
new iron light-house, then unfinished, in the 
shape of an egg-shell painted red, and placed 
high on iron pillars, like the ovum of a sea- 
monster floating on the waves, — destined to be 
phosphorescent. As we passed it at half-tide 
we saw the spray tossed up nearly to the shell. 
A man was to live in that egg-shell day and 
night, a mile from the shore. When I passed 
it the next summer it was finished and two men 
lived in it, and a light-house keeper said that 
they told him that in a recent gale it had rocked 
so as to shake the plates off the table. Think 
of making your bed thus in the crest of a 
breaker! To have the waves, like a pack of 
hungry wolves, eying you always, night and 
day, and from time to time making a spring at 
jou, almost sure to have you at last. And not 
one of all those voyagers can come to your re- 
lief, — but when yon light goes out, it will be a 
sign that the light of your life has gone out 



PROVINCETOWN 819 

also. What a place to compose a work on 
breakers ! This light-house was the cynosure of 
all eyes. Every passenger watched it for half 
an hour at least ; yet a colored cook belonging 
to the boat, whom I had seen come out of his 
quarters several times to empty his dishes over 
the side with a flourish, chancing to come out 
just as we were abreast of this light, and not 
more than forty rods from it, and were all gaz- 
ing at it, as he drew back his arm, caught sight 
of it, and with surprise exclaimed, " What 's 
that?" He had been employed on this boat for 
a year, and passed this light every week-day, 
but as he had never chanced to empty his dishes 
just at that point, had never seen it before. To 
look at lights was the pilot's business; he 
minded the kitchen fire. It suggested how little 
some who voyaged round the world could man- 
age to see. You would almost as easil}^ believe 
that there are men who never yet chanced to 
come out at the right time to see the sun. 
What avails it though a light be placed on the 
top of a hill, if you spend all your life directly 
under the hill? It might as weU be under a 
bushel. This light-house, as is well known, 
was swept away in a storm in April, 1851, and 
the two men in it, and the next morning not a 
vestige of it was to be seen from the shore. 
A Hull man told me that he helped set up a 



320 CAPE COD 

white-oak pole on Minot's Ledge some years 
before. It was fifteen inches in diameter, forty- 
one feet high, sunk four feet in the rock, and 
was secured by four guys, — but it stood only 
one year. Stone piled up cob-fashion near the 
same place stood eight years. 

When I crossed the Bay in the Melrose in 
July, we hugged the Scituate shore as long as 
possible, in order to take advantage of the 
wind. Far out on the Bay (off this shore) we 
scared up a brood of young ducks, probably 
black ones, bred hereabouts, which the packet 
had frequently disturbed in her trips. A 
townsman, who was making the voyage for the 
first time, walked slowly round into the rear of 
the helmsman, when we were in the middle of 
the Bay, and looking out over the sea, before he 
sat down there, remarked with as much original- 
ity as was possible for one who used a borrowed 
expression, "This is a great country." He had 
been a timber merchant, and I afterward saw 
him taking the diameter of the main mast with 
his stick, and estimating its height. I returned 
from the same excursion in the Olata, a very 
handsome and swift-sailing yacht, which left 
Provincetown at the same time with two other 
packets, the Melrose and Frolic. At first there 
was scarcely a breath of air stirring, and we 
loitered about Long Point for an hour in com- 



PROVINCETOWN 821 

pany, — with our heads over the rail watching 
the great sand-circles and the fishes at the bot- 
tom in calm water fifteen feet deep. But after 
clearing the Cape we rigged a flying- jib, and, 
as the Captain had prophesied, soon showed our 
consorts our heels. There was a steamer six or 
eight miles northward, near the Cape, towing a 
large ship toward Boston. Its smoke stretched 
perfectly horizontal several miles over the sea, 
and by a sudden change in its direction, warned 
us of a change in the wind before we felt it. 
The steamer appeared very far from the ship, 
and some young men who had frequently used 
the Captain's glass, but did not suspect that the 
vessels were connected, expressed surprise that 
they kept about the same distance apart for so 
many hours. At which the Captain dryly re- 
marked, that probably they would never get 
any nearer together. As long as the wind held 
we kept pace with the steamer, but at length it 
died away almost entirely, and the flying-jib did 
all the work. When we passed the light-boat 
at Minot's Ledge, the Melrose and Frolic were 
just visible ten miles astern. 

Consider the islands bearing the names of all 
the saints, bristling with forts like chestnut- 
burs, or echmidce, yet the police will not let a 
couple of Irishmen have a private sparring- 
match on one of them, as it is a government 



322 CAPE COD 

monopoly ; all the great seaports are in a boxing 
attitude, and you must sail prudently between 
two tiers of stony knuckles before you come to 
feel the warmth of their breasts. 

The Bermudas are said to have been discov- 
ered by a Spanish ship of that name which was 
wrecked on them, " which till then," says Capt. 
eJohn Smith, " for six thousand years had been 
nameless." The English did not stumble upon 
them in their first voyages to Virginia; and 
the first Englishman who was ever there was 
wrecked on them in 1593. Smith says, "No 
place known hath better walls nor a broader 
ditch." Yet at the very first j^lanting of them 
with some sixty persons, in 1612, the first Gov- 
ernor, the same year, "built and laid the foun- 
dation of eight or nine forts." To be ready, 
one would say, to entertain the first ship's com- 
pany that should be Jiext shipwrecked on to 
them. It would have been more sensible to 
have built as many "Charity -houses." These 
are the vexed Bermoothes. 

Our great sails caught all the air there was, 
and our low and narrow hull caused the least 
possible friction. Coming up the harbor against 
the stream we swept by everything. Some 
j^oung men returning from a fishing excursion 
came to the side of their smack, while we were 
thus steadily drawing by them, and, bowing, 



PROVINCETOWN 323 

observed, with the best possible grace, "We 
give it up." Yet sometimes we were nearly at 
a stand-still. The sailors watched (two) objects 
on the shore to ascertain whether we advanced 
or receded. In the harbor it was like the even- 
ing of a holiday. The Eastern steamboat passed 
us with music and a cheer, as if they were going 
to a ball, when they might be going to — Davy's 
locker. 

I heard a boy telling the story of Nix's mate 
to some girls as we passed that spot. That was 
the name of a sailor hung there, he said. — "If 
I am guilty, this island will remain; but if I 
am innocent, it will be washed away," and now 
it is all washed away ! 

Next (?) came the fort on George's Island. 
These are bungling contrivances : not our fortes^ 
but onr foibles. Wolfe sailed by the strongest 
fort in North America in the dark, and took it. 

I admired the skill with which the vessel was 
at last brought to her place in the dock, near 
the end of Long Wharf. It was candle-light, 
and my eyes could not distinguish the wharves 
jutting out toward us, but it appeared like an 
even line of shore densely crowded with ship- 
ping. You could not have guessed within a 
quarter of a mile of Long Wharf. Neverthe- 
less, we were to be blown to a crevice amid 
them, — steering right into the maze. Down 



324 CAPE COD 

goes tlie mainsail, and only the jib draws us 
along. Now we are within four rods of the 
shipping, having already dodged several outsid- 
ers; but it is still only a maze of spars, and 
rigging, and hulls, — not a crack can be seen. 
Down goes the jib, but still we advance. The 
Captain stands aft with one hand on the tiller, 
and the other holding his night-glass, — his son 
stands on the bowsprit straining his eyes, — the 
passengers feel their hearts half-way to their 
mouths, expecting a crash. "Do you see any 
room there?" asks the Captain quietly. He 
must make up his mind in five seconds, else he 
will carry away that vessel's bowsprit, or lose 
his own. "Yes, sir, here is a place for us;" 
and in three minutes more we are fast to the 
wharf in a little gap between two bigger vessels. 

And now we were in Boston. Whoever has 
been down to the end of Long Wharf, and 
walked through Quincy Market, has seen Bos- 
ton. 

Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, 
New Orleans, and the rest, are the names of 
wharves projecting into the sea (surrounded by 
the shops and dwellings of the merchants), good 
places to take in and to discharge a cargo (to 
land the products of other climes and load the 
exports of our own). I see a great many bar- 
rels and fig-drums, — piles of wood for um- 



PROVINCETOWN 325 

brella-sticks, — blocks of ^anite and ice, — 
great heaps of goods, and the means of packing 
and conveying them, — much wrapping-paper 
and twine, — many crates and hogsheads and 
trucks, — and that is Boston. The more bar- 
rels, the more Boston. The museums and 
scientific societies and libraries are accidental. 
They gather around the sands to save carting. 
The wharf -rats and custom-house officers, and 
broken-do^vn poets, seeking a fortune amid the 
barrels. Their better or worse lyceums, and 
preachings, and doctorings, these, too, are acci- 
dental, and the malls of commons are always 
small potatoes. When I go to Boston, I n.:tu- 
rally go straight through the city (taking tlio 
Market in my way), down to the end of Long 
Wharf, and look oif, for I have no cousins in 
the back alleys, — and there I see a great many 
countrymen in their shirt-sleeves from Maine, 
and Pennsylvania, and all along shore and in 
shore, and some foreigners beside, loading and 
unloading and steering their teams about, as at 
a country fair. 

When we reached Boston that October, I had 
a gill of Provincetown sand in my shoes, and at 
Concord there was still enough left to sand my 
pages for many a day ; and I seemed to hear the 
sea roar, as if I lived in a shell, for a week 
afterward. 



326 CAPE COD 

The places which I have described may seem 
strange and remote to my townsmen, — indeed, 
from Boston to Provincetown is twice as far as 
from England to France ; yet step into the cars, 
and in six hours you may stand on those four 
planks, and see the Cape which Gosnold is said 
to have discovered, and which I have so poorly 
described. If you had started when I first ad- 
vised you, you might have seen our tracks in 
the sand, still fresh, and reaching all the way 
from the Nauset lights to Race Point, some 
thirty miles, — for at every step we made an 
impression on the Cape, though we were not 
aware of it, and though our account may have 
made no impression on your minds. But what 
is our account? In it there is no roar, no 
beach-birds, no tow-cloth. 

We often love to think now of the life of men 
on beaches, — at least in midsummer, when the 
weather is serene; their sunny lives on the 
sand, amid the beach-grass and the bayberries, 
their companion a cow, their wealth a jag of 
drift-wood or a few beach-plums, and their 
music the surf and the peep of the beach-bird. 

We went to see the Ocean, and that is prob- 
ably the best place of all our coast to go to. If 
you go by water, you may experience what it is 
to leave and to approach these shores; you may 
see the Stormy Petrel by the way, OaXaa-a-oSpojxa, 



PROVINCETOWN 327 

running over the sea, and if tlie weather is but a 
little thick, may lose sight of the land in mid- 
passage. I do not know where there is another 
beach in the Atlantic States, attached to the 
mainland, so long, and at the same time so 
straight, and completely uninterrupted by creeks 
or coves or fresh-water rivers or marshes; for 
though there may be clear places on the map, 
they would probably be found by the foot trav- 
eler to be intersected by creeks and marshes; 
certainly there is none where there is a double 
way, such as I have described, a beach and a 
bank, which at the same time shows you the 
land and the sea, and part of the time two seas. 
The Great South Beach of Long Island, which 
I have since visited, is longer still without an 
inlet, but it is literally a mere sand-bar, ex- 
posed, several miles from the island, and not 
the edge of a continent wasting before the as- 
saults of the ocean. Though wild and desolate, 
as it wants the bold bank, it possesses but half 
the grandeur of Cape Cod in my eyes, nor is 
the imagination contented with its southern 
aspect. The only other beaches of great length 
on our Atlantic coast, which I have heard sail- 
ors speak of, are those of Barnegat on the Jer- 
sey shore, and Currituck between Virginia and 
North Carolina ; but these, like the last, are low 
and narrow sand-bars, lying off the coast, and 



328 CAPE COD 

separated from the mainland by lagoons. Be- 
sides, as you go farther south the tides are fee- 
bler, and cease to add variety and grandeur to 
the shore. On the Pacific side of our country 
also no doubt there is good walking to be found ; 
a recent writer and dweller there tells us that 
"the coast from Cape Disappointment (or the 
Columbia River) to Cape Flattery (at the Strait 
of Juan de Fuca) is nearly north and south, and 
can be traveled almost its entire length on a 
beautiful sand-beach," with the exception of 
two bays, four or five rivers, and a few points 
jutting into the sea. The common shell-fish 
found there seem to be often of corresponding 
types, if not identical species, with those of 
Cape Cod. The beach which I have described, 
however, is not hard enough for carriages, but 
must be explored on foot. When one carriage 
has passed along, a following one sinks deeper 
still in its rut. It has at present no name any 
more than fame. That portion south of Nauset 
Harbor is commonly called Chatham Beach. 
The part in Eastham is called Nauset Beach, 
and off Wellfleet and Truro the Backside, or 
sometimes, perhaps. Cape Cod Beach. I think 
that part which extends without interruption 
from Nauset Harbor to Race Point should be 
called Cape Cod Beach, and do so speak of it. 
One of the most attractive points for visitors 



PROVINCETOWN 329 

is in the northeast part of Wellfleet, where ac- 
commodations (I mean for men and women of 
tolerable health and habits) could probably be 
had within half a mile of the seashore. It best 
combines the country and the seaside. Though 
the Ocean is out of sight, its faintest murmur 
is audible, and you have only to climb a hill to 
find yourself on its brink. It is but a step 
from the glassy surface of the Herring Ponds to 
the big Atlantic Pond where the waves never 
cease to break. Or perhaps the Highland Light 
in Truro may compete with this locality, for 
there there is a more uninterrupted view of the 
Ocean and the Bay, and in the summer there is 
always some air stirring on the edge of the bank 
there, so that the inhabitants know not what 
hot weather is. As for the view, the keeper of 
the light, with one or more of his family, walks 
out to the edge of the bank after every meal to 
look off, just as if they had not lived there all 
their days. In short, it will wear well. And 
what picture will you substitute for that, upon 
your walls? But ladies cannot get down the 
bank there at present without the aid of a block 
and tackle. 

Most persons visit the seaside in warm 
weather, when fogs are frequent, and the atmo- 
sphere is wont to be thick, and the charm of the 
sea is to some extent lost. But I suspect that 



330 CAPE COD 

the fall is the best season, for then the atmo- 
sphere is more transparent, and it is a greater 
pleasure to look out over the sea. The clear 
and bracing air, and the storms of autumn and 
winter even, are necessary in order that we 
may get the impression which the sea is calcu- 
lated to make. In October, when the weather 
is not intolerably cold, and the landscape wears 
its autumnal tints, such as, methinks, only a 
Cape Cod landscape ever wears, especially if 
you have a storm during your stay, — that I am 
convinced is the best time to visit this shore. 
In autumn, even in August, the thoughtful days 
begin, and we can walk anywhere with prGiit. 
Beside, an outward cold and dreariness, which 
make it necessary to seek shelter at night, lend 
a spirit of adventure to a walk. 

The time must come when this coast will be a 
place of resort for those New-Englanders who 
really wish to visit the seaside. At present it 
is wholly unknown to the fashionable world, and 
probably it will never be agreeable to them. If 
it is merely a ten-pin alley, or a circular rail- 
way, or an ocean of mint-julep, that the visitor 
is in search of, — if he thinks more of the wine 
than the brine, as I suspect some do at New- 
port, — I trust that for a long time he will be 
disappointed here. But this shore will never 
be more attractive than it is now. Such beaches 



PROVINCETOWN 331 

as are fashionable are here made and unmade in 
a day, I may almost say, by the sea shifting its 
sands. Lynn and Nantasket! this bare and 
bended arm it is that makes the bay in which 
they lie so snugly. What are springs and wa- 
terfalls? Here is the spring of springs, the 
waterfall of waterfalls. A storm in the fall or 
winter is the time to visit it; a light-house or a 
fisherman's hut the true hotel. A man may 
stand there and put all America behind him. 



INDEX 



Across the Cape, 153-178. 

Alphonse, Jean, " Routier," quoted, 
288. 

Anchors, dragging for, 194. 

Apple-trees, Cape Cod, 36-38. 

Archer, Gabriel, quoted, 295. 

Architecture, American, 32. 

Autumn landscape near Province- 
town, 232-234. 

Azy, a Bible name, 112. 

Bank swallow, the, 196. 

Barber's Historical Collections, 
quoted, 267. 

Barnstable (Mass.), 24. 

Bascom, the Rev. Jonathan, 63. 

Bayberry, the, 120-122. 

Beach, The, 65-91. 

Beach Again, The, 120-152. 

Beaches, Cape Cod the best of At- 
lantic, 326-328. 

Beach-grass, 241, 242, 246-251. 

Beach-pea, the, 105, 248, 249. 

Bellamy, the pirate wrecked off 
Wellfleet, 192. 

Beverly, Robert, "History of Vir- 
ginia," quoted, 16, 120, 121. 

Billingsgate, part of Wellfleet called, 
96. 

Billingsgate Island, 105. 

Birds on Cape Cod, 134, 135, 156, 
196. 

Blackfish driven ashore in storm, 
170-176. 

Borde, Sieur de la, Relatio'i des 
Caraibes, quoted, 186. 

Boston, a big wharf, 325. 

Boys, Provincetown, 262. 

Breakers, 66, 252. 

Brereton, John, quoted, 296. 

Brewster (Mass.), 24, 31, 32. 

Bridgewater (Mass.), 20. 

Brook Island in Cohasset, 4. 

Browne, Sir Thomas, quoted, 188. 

Buckland, Curiositiea of Natural 
History, 98. 



Cabot, the discoveries of, 281. 

Cambria, the steamer, aground, 110. 

Camp-meetings, Eastham, 53-55, 
versus Ocea.li, 77. 

Cape Cod, T.'s various visits to, 1 ; 
derivation of name of, 2 ; forma- 
tion of, 2, 3, 21 ; barrenness of, 
40-42; the real, 74; houses, 93; 
landscape, a, 157-163 ; men, the 
Norse quality of, 166, 167 ; west- 
ern shore of, 169 ; changes in the 
coast-line of, 180-185 ; clothes- 
yard, a, 265 ; and its harbors, va- 
rious names for, 273, 276 ; Gos- 
nold's discovery of, 292-299 ; 
people, 311, 312. 

" Cape Cod Railroad," the, 20. 

Champlaiu, " Voyages," quoted, 99 ; 
records and maps of, 274-282. 

Charity, cold, 90. 

Chatham (Mass.), described, 29. 

Cigar-smoke, the gods not to be 
appeased with, 47. 

Cities as wharves, 324. 

Clams, Cape Cod, 39, 40 ; large, 84 ; 
or quahogs, catching birds, 100, 
101 ; stones shaped like, 129. 

Clay Pounds, the, 157 ; why so 
called, 189 ; the Somerset wrecked 
on, 193. 

Cohasset (Mass.), the wreck at, 3- 
14 ; Rocks, sea-bathing at, 17, 18. 

Corn, great crops of, 42-45. 

Cows fed on fishes' heads, 258. 

Crantz, account of Greenland, 
quoted, 69, 178. 

Darwin, Charles, quoted, 144, 145. 
Dead body on the shore, a, 126, 

127. 
De Monts, Champlain and, 275. 
Dennis (Mass.), 24 ; described, 27- 

29. 
Doane, Heman, verses by, on 

Thomas Prince's pear-tree, 50, 51. 
Doane, John, 51. 



334 



INDEX 



Dogs on the Beashore, 222-224. I 

Driftwood, Cape Cod and Green- 
land, 68-70. 
Dwight, Timothy, quoted, 255, 272. 

East Harbor Village, in Truro, 163. 

Eastham (Mass.), the history of, 48- 
64; ministers of, 51-64; Table 
Lands of, 71 ; the Pilgrims, 310. 

Fences in Truro, 164, 165. 

" Fish, A Religious," newspaper 

clipping, 138; uses of, in Prov- 

incetown, 255-259. 
Fish stories, ancient, 259, 260. 
Fishes driven ashore by storm, 170- 

176. 
Fishing for bass, 139 ; mackerel, 

215-221, 227-229. 
Fox, starting up a, 177. 
Franklin, wreck of the ship, 84, 

109; wreckage from the, 135, 

136. 
French, coin found on beach at 
WeUfleet, 193 ; explorers in and 
about New England, 274-292. 
Fruit-trees, paucity of, in Cape 

towns, 38. 
" Furdustrandas,'^ 225, 230. 

Galway, Ireland, the wrecked brig 

from, 5. 
Gazetteer, the, 28, 31. 
Gerard, the English herbalist, 

quoted, 248. 
Gilbert, Sir Humphrey, 146. 
Gilpin, William, quoted, 141. 
Gosnold, Captain Bartholomew, 2 ; 

discovery of Cape Cod by, 292- 

299. 
Grampus Rock, in Cohasset, 7, 9. 
Graveyard, a Cape Cod, 176. 
Greenland, driftwood in, 69. 
Gulls, methods of catching, 83. 

Herring River, 93. 

Highland Light, The, 179-210. 

Highland Light, 157, 179 ; descrip- 
tion and stories of, 201-210. 

Hog Island, inside of Hull, 15. 

HuU (Mass.), 15. 

Humane Society, huts of the, 73, 
85-91. 

Humboldt, Alex, von, quoted, 143. 

Huts for shipwrecked sailors, 73, 
85-91. 

Indian habitation, signs of previous, 

99. 
Italian discoverers, 283. 



Jeremiah's Gutter, 40. 
Jerusalem Village (Mass.), 17. 
Jesuits, early, in New England, 

280. 
Josselyn, John, quoted, 115. 

Kalm, Travels in North America, 

quoted, 150, 241. 
Kelp, 77-80. 

Legs, the, as compasses, 103. 
Lescarbot, quoted, 290, 301. 
Long Wharf, taking a place at, 323. 

Mackerel, fishing for, 215-221, 227- 

229 ; fleet, the, 238, 315, 316. 
Maps of Cape Cod and New England, 

274-278, 282, 283. 
Massachusetts Bay, shallowness of, 

147. 
Massachusetts Historical Society, 

Collections of the, 22. 
Menhaden, schools of, 142. 
Ministers, salaries of country, 52 ; 

some old Cape Cod, 55-64. 
Minot's Ledge, the light on, 318, 

319. 
Mirages on sand and sea, 229-231. 
Moisture in Cape Cod air, 198. 
Mount Ararat in Provincetown, 229. 
Mourt's Relation, quoted, 42, 111, 

303. 

Nantasket (Mass.), 17. 

Nauset Harbor, in Orleans, 34, 74. 

Nauset Lights, 46. 

Nix's mate, story of, 323. 

Northeaster, a, 245, 252-254. 

Norumbega, 289. 

Ocean, calm, rough, and fruitful, 
148-152 ; beaches across the, 213, 
214. 

October, the best season for visiting 
the Cape, 330. 

Olata, the swift-sailing yacht, 320. 

Organ-grinders on the Cape, 33. 

Orleans (Mass.), 24; Higgins's tav- 
ern at, 33. 

Osborn, the Rev. Samuel, 61, 62. 

Pamet River, 156. 

Pear-tree, the, planted by Thomas 

Prince, 50. 
Penliallow, Samuel, History, quoted, 

284. 
Petrel, the storm, 135. 
Pilgrims, arrival of the, 303-311. 
Pitch-pine, tracts of, 24. 
Plains of Nacset, The, 34-64. 



INDEX 



335 



Plants, on Cape Cod beach, 131 ; 
about Highland Light, IGO, 200 ; 
about the Clay Pounds, 197. 

Pleasant Cove, in Cohasset, 19. 

Plover, the piping of, 82. 

Point Allerton, 15. 

Pohiphloisboios Thalassa, the Rev., 
77. 

Pond Village, 1G9. 

Ponds in Welltieet, 105. 

Post-office, the domestic, 27. 

Postel, Charte Geographique, 
quoted, 301. 

Poverty-grass, 25 ; as the Barnsta,- 
ble coat-of-anns, IGO, 101. 

Prince, Thomas, 49. 

Pring, Martin, New England dis- 
coveries of, 275, 27fi, 298, 299. 

Provincetown, 255-331. 

Provincetown (Mass.), walking to, 
34, 6G ; Bank, suspected of rob- 
bing, 212 ; approach to, 232 ; de- 
scribed, 234-237; fish, 256-259; 
boys, 262 ; Harbor, 272. 

Purple Sea, the, 141. 

Race Point, 74, 232, 240. 
'• Rut," the, a sound before a change 
of wind, 114, 115. 

St. George's Bank, 146, 147. 

St. John, the wrecked brig, 5. 

Salt, as manufactured by Capt. John 
Sears, 30, 31 ; works, 2G3, 264. 

Sand, blowing, 245 ; inroads of the, 
250, 251 ; Provincetown, 265-268. 

Sandwich (Mass.), 20 ; described, 
22-24. 

Schooner, origin of word, 239. 

Sea and the Desert, The, 211- 
254. 

Sea, the roar of the, 45, 76 ; re- 
moteness of the bottom of the, 
146. 

Sea-bathing, 17, 18. 

Sea fleas, 134. 

Sears, Capt. John, and salt manu- 
facture, 30, 31. 

Shank-Painter Swamp, 240, 262. 

Sharks, 132-134. 

Shell-fish on Cape Cod beach, 130, 
131. 

Shipwreck, The, 1-19. 

Signals, old clothes as, 24. 

Simpkins, the Rev. John, quoted, 
33. 

Smith, Capt. John, quoted, 216, 
309; map of New England by, 
276. 

Smoothness of ocean, 148. 



Snow's Hollow, 70. 

Somerset, British ship of war, 

wrecked on Clay Pounds, 193. 
Spanisli discoverei-s, 283. 
Stage-Coach Views, 20-33. 
Stone, the Rev. Nathan, G4. 
Stones, rarity of, on Cape Cod, 260- 

271. 
Suet, in Dennis (Mass.), 30. 
Sunday in Provincetown, 305. 
Sun-squall, sea-jellies called, 81. 

Table Lands of Eastham, 71. 

Thor-finn andThor-eau, 230 ; voyage 
of, 299. 

Tlioreau, Henry David, various vis- 
its to Cape Cod, 1 ; starts for Cape 
Cod, Oct. 9, 1849, 3 ; goes on a 
mackerel cruise, 219 ; takes leave 
of Cape Cod, 311. 

Thorhall, the disappointment of, 
225. 

Thorn-apple, the, 15, 16. 

Thorwald, voyage of, 299, 300. 

Travelers, good humor of, 25. 

Treat, the Rev. Samuel, 55-60. 

Trees on Cape Cod, 153-156 ; disap- 
pearance of, 308. 

Truro (Mass.), 123, 163-165; the 
wreck of, 190. 

Turtles, land and sea, 243. 

" Uncle Bill," somebody's (or every- 
body's), 168. 

Vegetables in the oysterman's gar- 
den, 118. 

Vessels seen from Cape Cod, 123- 
125, 140, 143-146. 

"Water, Cape Cod, 271. 

Waves on the shore, 186-189. 

Webb, the Rev. Benjamin, 62, 63. 

Webb's Island, the lost, 182. 

Webster, Daniel, quoted, 148. 

Wellfleet Oysterman, The, 92- 
119. 

Wellfleet (Mass.), oysters, 96; Bel- 
lamy wrecked off, 192 ; a good 
headquarters for visitors to the 
Cape, 329. 

" When descends on the Atlantic," 
Longfellow, quoted, 80. 

Whitehead, near Cohasset, 10. 

Wind-mills, Cape Cod, 38, 39. 

Windows in Cape Cod houses, 93. 

Winthrop, Gov., quoted, 285. 

Women, pinched-up, 26. 

Wood, William, quoted, 100. 

Wood End, wreck at, 313-315. 



336 



INDEX 



Wreck of the Franklin, 84 ; of Bel- 
lamy the pirate, 192 ; of the Brit- 
ish ship of war Somerset, 193 ; 
story of a man from a, 313-315. 

Wreckage, 137-139. 



Wrecker, a Cape Cod, 67, 68. 
Wrecks, Truro, 190 ; the 
quences of, 195, 196. 

Yarmouth (Mass.), 24. 



